NRLF 


B   M   7E1   3MD 


GIFT  OF 


THE  LOVELY  LADY 


By  the  same  author 

A  WOMAN  OF  GENIUS 

THE  ARROW  MAKER 

THE  GREEN  BOUGH 

CHRIST  EN  ITALY 


"It  was  one  thin  web  of  rose  and  gold  over  lakes  of 
burnished  light     .     .     .     ." 


THE  LOVELY  LADY 

BY  MARY  AUSTIN 


Frontispiece  by  Gordon  Grant 


GARDEN  CITY        NEW  YORK 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1913,  by 

DOUBLEDAY,    PAGE  .&    COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of 

translation  into  Foreign  Languages, 

including  the  Scandinavian. 


* 


MA  ; 


To 

J.  AND  E. 

THE  COMPANIONS  OF  THE  GONDOLA 


Q-fl  .Q-fl  - 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PART  ONE  ..... 

In  which  Peter  meets  a  Dragon,  and  the  Lovely 
Lady  makes  her  appearance.  3 

PART  Two 

In  which  Peter  becomes  invisible  on  the  way  to 
growing  rich.  37 

PART  THREE        

In  which  Peter  becomes  a  bachelor.  59 

PART  FOUR         

In  which  the  Lovely  Lady  makes  a  final  appearance.      107 


PART  ONE 

IN   WHICH    PETER 
MEETS  A   DRAGON,     AND 

THE   LOVELY   LADY 
MAKES   HER  APPEARANCE 


PART  ONE 

IN    WHICH    PETER    MEETS    A    DRAGON,    AND    THE 
LOVELY    LADY    MAKES    HER    APPEARANCE 


THE  walls  of  the  Wonderful  House  rose  up 
straight  and  shining,  pale  greenish  gold  as  the 
slant  sunlight  on  the  orchard  grass  under  the 
apple  trees ;  the  windows  that  sprang  arching  to 
the  summer  blueness  let  in  the  scent  of  the 
cluster  rose  at  the  turn  of  the  fence,  beginning  to 
rise  above  the  dusty  smell  of  the  country  roads, 
and  the  evening  clamour  of  the  birds  in  Bloom- 
bury  wood.  As  it  dimmed  and  withdrew,  the 
shining  of  the  walls  came  out  more  clearly. 
Peter  saw  then  that  they  were  all  of  coloured 
pictures  wrought  flat  upon  the  gold,  and  as  the 
glow  of  it  increased  they  began  to  swell  and 
stir  like  a  wood  waking.  They  leaned  out  from 
the  walls,  looking  all  one  way  toward  the  in- 

3 


4.  The  Lovely  Lady 

creasing  light  and  tap-tap  of  the  Princess'  feet 
along  the  halls. 

"Peter,  oh,  Peter!" 

The  tap-tapping  grew  sharp  and  nearer  like 
the  sound  of  a  crutch  on  a  wooden  veranda, 
and  the  voice  was  Ellen's. 

"Oh,  Peter,  you  are  always  a-reading  and 
a-reading!" 

Peter  rolled  off  the  long  settle  where  he  had 
«been  stretched  and  put  the  book  in  his  pocket 
apologetically. 

"I  was  just  going  to  quit,"  he  said;  "did  you 
want  anything,  Ellen?" 

"The  picnic  is  coming  back;  I  thought  we 
could  go  down  to  the  turn  to  meet  them.  Mrs. 
Sibley  said  she  would  save  me  some  things 
from  the  luncheon." 

If  there  was  a  little  sting  to  Peter  in  Ellen's 
eagerness,  it  was  evidence  at  least,  how  com 
pletely  he  and  his  mother  had  kept  her  from 
realizing  that  it  was  chiefly  because  of  their 
not  being  able  to  afford  the  well-filled  basket 
demanded  by  a  Bloombury  picnic  that  they 
had  not  accepted  the  invitation.  Ellen  had 
thought  it  was  because  Bet,  the  mare,  could  not 


The  Lovely  Lady  5 

be  sparecf  all  day  from  the  ploughing  nor  Peter 
from  hoeing  the  garden,  and  her  mother  was 
too  busy  with  the  plaid  gingham  dress  she  was 
making  for  the  minister's  wife,  to  do  any  baking. 
It  meant  to  Ellen,  the  broken  fragments  of  the 
luncheon,  just  so  much  of  what  a  picnic  should 
mean:  the  ride  in  the  dusty  morning,  swings 
under  the  trees,  easy  games  that  she  could  play, 
lemonade,  pails  and  pails  of  it,  pink  ham  sand 
wiches  and  frosted  cake;  and  if  Ellen  could 
have  any  of  these,  she  was  having  a  little  piece 
of  the  picnic.  What  it  would  have  meant 
particularly  to  Peter  over  and  above  a  day  let 
loose,  the  arching  elms,  the  deep  fern  of  Bloom- 
bury  wood,  might  have  been  some  passages, 
perhaps,  which  could  be  taken  home  and  made 
over  into  the  groundwork  of  new  and  interesting 
adventures  in  the  House  from  which  Ellen 
had  recalled  him.  There  was  a  girl  with  June 
apple  cheeks  and  bright  brown  eyes  at  that 
picnic,  who  could  have  given  points  to  prin 
cesses. 

He  followed  the  tapping  of  his  sister's  crutch 
along  the  thick,  bitter  smelling  dust  of  the 
road,  rising  more  and  more  heavily  as  the  dew 


6  The  Lovely  Lady 

gathered,  until  they  came  to  the  turn  by  the 
cluster  rose  and  heard  below  them  on  the  bridge, 
the  din  of  the  wheels  and  the  gay  laughter  of  the 
picnickers. 

"Hi,  Peter!" 

"Hello,  Ellen!" 

"Awful  sorry  you  couldn't  come  .  .  . 
had  a  bully  time.  .  .  .  Killed  a  copper 
head  and  two  water  snakes." 

"Here,  Ellen,  catch  ahold  of  this!" 

And  while  she  was  about  it  the  June  apple 
girl  leaned  over  the  end-board  of  the  wagon, 
and  spoke  softly  to  Peter. 

"We're  going  over  to  Harvey's  pasture  next 
Wednesday  afternoon,  berrying,  in  the  Demo 
crat  wagon  with  our  team;  Jim  Harvey's  going 
to  drive.  We  made  it  up  to-day.  Surely  you 
can  get  away  for  an  afternoon?"  That  was 
what  the  voice  said.  "To  be  with  me,"  the 
eyes  added. 

"I  don't  know.     .     .     .    I'd  like  it.  .     .     ." 

It  was  not  altogether  the  calculation  as  to 
how  much  earlier  he  would  have  to  get  up  that 
morning  to  be  able  to  take  an  hour  off  in  the 
afternoon,  that  made  Peter  hesitate,  but  the 


The  Lovely  Lady  7 

sudden  swimming  of  his  senses  about  the  point 
of  meeting  eyes.  "I'll  tell  you  what,"  he  said, 
"you  come  by  for  Ellen,  and  I'll  walk  over 
about  four  and  ride  home  with  you." 

"Oh,"  said  the  girl;  she  did  not  know  quite 
whether  to  triumph  at  having  gained  so  much 
or  to  be  disappointed  at  so  little.  "I'll  be  ex 
pecting  you." 

The  horses  creaked  forward  in  the  harness, 
the  dust  puffed  up  from  under  the  wheels  and 
drowned  the  smell  of  the  wilding  rose,  it  fell 
thick  on  the  petals  and  a  little  on  Peter's  spirit, 
too,  as  he  followed  Ellen  back  to  the  house, 
though  it  never  occurred  to  him  to  think  any 
more  of  it  than  that  he  had  been  working  too 
long  in  the  hot  sun  and  was  very  tired.  It  did 
not,  however,  prevent  his  eating  his  share  of  the 
picnic  dainties  as  he  sat  with  his  mother  and 
Ellen  on  the  veranda.  Then  as  the  soft  flitter 
of  the  bats'  wings  began  in  the  dusk,  he  kissed 
them  both  and  went  early  up  to  bed. 

Peter's  room  was  close  under  the  roof  and 
that  was  close  under  the  elm  boughs;  all 
hours  he  could  hear  them  finger  it  with  soft 
rustling  touches.  The  bed  was  pulled  to 


8  The  Lovely  Lady 

the  window  that  gave  upon  the  downslope 
of  the  hill;  at  the  foot  of  it  one  saw  the 
white  bloom-faces  of  the  alders  lift  and  bow 
above  the  folded  leaves,  and  the  rising  of  the 
river  damp  across  the  pastures.  All  the  light 
reflected  from  the  sky  above  Bloombury  wood 
was  no  more  than  enough  to  make  a  glimmer  on 
the  glass  of  a  picture  that  hung  at  the  foot  of 
Peter's  bed.  It  served  to  show  the  gilt  of  the 
narrow  frame  and  the  soft  black  of  the  print 
upon  which  Peter  had  looked  so  many  times 
that  he  thought  now  he  was  still  seeing  it  as  he 
lay  staring  in  the  dusk  —  a  picture  of  a  young 
man  in  bright  armour  with  loosened  hair,  riding 
down  a  particularly  lumpy  and  swollen  dragon. 
Flames  came  out  of  the  creature's  mouth 
in  the  immemorial  fashion  of  dragons,  but 
the  young  man  was  not  hurt  by  them.  He 
sat  there  lightly,  his  horse  curvetting,  his  lance 
thrust  down  the  dragon's  throat  and  coming 
out  of  the  back  of  his  head,  doing  a  great  deed 
easily,  the  way  people  like  to  think  of  great 
things  being  done.  It  was  a  very  narrow  pic 
ture,  so  narrow  that  you  might  think  that  it  had 
something  to  do  with  the  dragon's  doubling  on 


The  Lovely  Lady  9 

himself  and  the  charger's  forefeet  being  up  in 
the  air  to  keep  within  the  limits  of  the  frame, 
and  the  exclusion  from  it  of  the  Princess  whom, 
as  his  father  had  told  him  the  story,  the  young 
knight  George  had  rescued  from  those  devour 
ing  jaws.  It  came  out  now,  quite  clearly,  that 
she  must  have  had  cheeks  as  red  as  June  apples 
and  eyes  like  the  pools  of  spring  rain  in  Bloom- 
bury  wood,  and  her  not  being  there  in  the  pic 
ture  was  only  a  greater  security  for  her  awaiting 
him  at  this  moment  in  the  House  with  the 
Shining  Walls. 

There  was,  for  the  boy  still  staring  at  it 
through  the  dusk,  something  particularly 
personal  in  the  picture,  for  ever  since  his  father 
had  died,  three  years  ago,  Peter  had  had  a 
dragon  of  his  own  to  fight.  Its  name  was 
Mortgage.  It  had  its  lair  in  Lawyer  Keplin- 
ger's  office,  from  which  it  threatened  twice 
yearly  to  come  out  and  eat  up  his  mother  and 
Ellen  and  the  little  house  and  farm,  and  re 
quired  to  have  its  mouth  stopped  with  great 
wads  of  interest  which  took  all  Peter's  laborious 
days  to  scrape  together.  This  year,  however, 
he  had  hopes,  if  the  garden  turned  out  well,  of 


10  The  Lovely  Lady 

lopping  off  a  limb  or  a  claw  of  the  dragon  by  way 
of  a  payment  on  the  principal,  which  somehow 
seemed  to  bring  the  Princess  so  much  nearer, 
that  as  Peter  lay  quite  comfortably  staring  up 
at  the  glimmer  on  the  wall,  the  four  gold  lines 
of  the  frame  began  to  stretch  up  and  out  and 
the  dark  block  of  the  picture  to  recede  until  it 
became  the  great  hall  of  a  palace  again,  and 
there  was  the  Princess  coming  toward  him  in  a 
golden  shimmer. 

There  was  just  such  another  glow  on  the 
afternoon  when  Peter  walked  over  to  the 
berrying  and  came  up  with  the  apple-cheeked 
girl  whose  name  was  Ada,  a  good  half  mile 
from  the  others.  As  they  climbed  together 
over  uneven  ground  she  gave  him  her  hand  to 
hold,  and  there  was  very  little  to  say  and  no 
need  of  saying  it  until  they  came  to  the  hill 
overlooking  the  pasture,  yellowing  toward  the 
end  of  summer,  full  of  late  bloom  and  misty 
colour  passing  insensibly  into  light.  Threads 
of  gossamer  caught  on  the  ends  of  the  scrub  or 
floated  free,  glinting  as  they  turned  and  bellied 
in  the  windless  air,  to  trick  the  imagination  with 
the  hint  of  robed,  invisible  presences. 


The  Lovely  Lady  11 

"Oh,  Peter,  don't  you  wish  it  would  stay 
like  this  always?" 

"Like  this,"  Peter  gave  her  hand  the  tiniest 
squeeze  to  show  what  there  was  about  this  that 
he  would  like  to  keep.  "It's  just  as  good  to 
look  at  any  season  though,"  he  insisted.  "I 
was  here  hunting  rabbits  last  winter,  in  Febru 
ary,  and  you  could  find  all  sorts  of  things  in  the 
runways  where  the  brambles  bent  over  and 
kept  off  the  snow;  bunches  of  berries  and  col 
oured  leaves,  and  little  green  fern,  and  birds 
hopping  in  and  out." 

Ada  spread  her  skirts  as  she  sat  on  a  flat 
boulder  and  began  sticking  leaves  into  Peter's 
hat. 

"  Peter,  what  are  you  going  to  do  this  winter?  " 

"I  don't  know,  I  should  like  to  go  over  to  the 
high  school  at  Harmony,  but  I  suppose  I'll 
try  to  get  a  place  to  work  near  home." 

"We've  been  getting  up  a  dancing  and  sing 
ing  school,  to  begin  in  October.  The  teacher 
is  coming  from  Dassonville.  It  will  be  once  a 
week; we  sing  for  an  hour  and  then  have  dancing. 
It  will  be  cheap  as  cheap  —  only  two  dollars 
a  month.  I  hope  you  can  come." 


12  The  Lovely  Lady 

"I  don't  know;  I'll  think  about  it."  He  was 
thinking  then  that  two  dollars  did  not  sound 
much,  but  when  you  come  to  subtract  it  from 
the  interest  it  was  a  great  deal,  and  then  there 
would  be  Ellen  to  pay  for,  and  perhaps  a  dress 
for  her,  and  dancing  shoes  for  himself  and  sing 
ing  books.  And  no  doubt  at  the  dances  there 
would  be  basket  suppers. 

"I  should  think  you  could  come  if  you  wanted 
to.  Jim  Harvey's  getting  it  up.  .  .  .  He 
wants  to  keep  company  with  me  this  winter." 
Ada  was  a  little  nervous  about  this,  but  as  she 
stole  a  glance  at  Peter's  face  as  he  lay  biting  at 
a  stem  of  grass,  she  grew  quite  comfortable 
again.  "But  I  don't  know  as  I  will, "she  said. 
"I  don't  care  very  much  for  Jim  Harvey." 

Peter  picked  up  a  stone  and  shied  it  joy 
ously  at  a  thrush  in  the  bushes. 

"And  I  don't  know  as  I  want  you  to,"  he 
declared  boldly.  "I'll  come  to  that  dancing 
school  if  I  possibly  can,  Ada,  and  if  I  can't 
you'll  know  it  isn't  because  I  don't  wish  to." 

"You  must  want  to  with  all  your  might  and 
that'll  make  it  come  true.  You  can  wish  it  on 
my  amethyst  ring." 


The  Lovely  Lady  13 

"You  won't  take  it  off  until  October,  Ada?" 
"I  truly  won't."  And  it  took  Peter  such  a 
long  time  to  get  the  ring  on  and  held  in  place 
while  the  wish  was  properly  made,  that  it  was 
practically  no  time  at  all  until  the  others  found 
them  on  the  way  home  as  they  came  laughing 
up  the  hill. 

As  it  happened,  however,  Peter  did  not  get 
to  the  dancing  school  once  that  winter.  The 
first  of  the  cold  spell  Ellen  had  slipped  on  the 
ice,  to  the  further  trying  of  her  lame  back,  and 
there  were  things  to  be  done  to  it  which  the 
doctor  said  could  not  possibly  be  put  off,  so  it 
happened  that  the  mortgage  dragon  did  not 
get  his  payment  and  Peter  gave  up  the  high 
school  to  get  a  place  in  Greenslet's  grocery  at 
Bloombury.  And  since  there  were  the  books 
to  be  made  up  after  supper,  and  as  Bet,  the 
mare,  after  being  driven  in  the  delivery  wagon 
all  day,  could  not  be  let  stand  half  the  night 
in  the  cold  at  the  schoolhouse  door,  it  turned 
out  that  Peter  had  not  been  once  to  the  dancing 
school.  In  the  beginning  he  had  done  some 
thing  for  himself  in  the  way  of  a  hall  for  danc 
ing,  thrown  out  from  the  House  of  the  Shining 


14  The  Lovely  Lady 

Walls,  in  which  he  and  the  Princess  Ada,  to 
lovely,  soundless  strains,  had  whirled  away,  and 
found  occasion  to  say  things  to  each  other  such 
as  no  ballroom  could  afford;  —  bright  star 
pointed  occasions  which  broke  and  scattered 
before  the  little  hints  of  sound  that  crept  up 
the  stair  to  advise  him  that  Ellen  was  stifling 
back  the  pain  for  fear  of  waking  him.  They 
had  moved  Ellen's  bed  downstairs  as  a  way  of 
getting  on  better  with  the  possibility  of  her 
being  bedridden  all  that  winter,  and  the  tiny 
whispered  moan  recalled  him  to  the  dread  that 
as  the  half  yearly  term  came  around,  what  with 
doctor's  bills  and  delicacies,  the  mortgage 
dragon  would  have  not  even  his  sop  of  interest, 
and  remain  whole  and  threatening  as  before. 

When  Ellen  was  able  to  sit  up  in  bed  the 
mother  moved  her  sewing  in  beside  it.  Then 
Peter  would  sit  on  the  other  side  of  the  lamp 
with  a  book,  and  the  walls  of  the  House  rose  up 
from  its  pages  gilded  finely,  and  the  lights  would 
come  out  and  the  dancing  begin,  but  before  he 
could  get  more  than  a  word  with  the  Princess, 
he  would  hear  Ellen : 

"Peter,  oh,  Peter!  I  wish  you  wouldn't  be 


The  Lovely  Lady  15 

always  with  your  nose  in  a  book.  I  wish  you 
would  talk  sometimes." 

"What  about,  Ellen?" 

"Oh,  Peter,  you  are  the  worsti  I  should 
think  you  would  take  some  interest  in  things." 

"  What  sort  of  things?  "  Peter  wished  to  know. 

"Why,  who  comes  in  the  store,  and  what 
they  say,  and  everything." 

"Mrs.  Sleason  wanted  us  to  open  a  kit  of 
mackerel  to  see  if  she'd  like  it,"  began  Peter 
literally,  "and  we  persuaded  her  to  take  two 
cans  of  sardines  instead.  Does  that  interest 
you?" 

"Have  you  sold  any  of  the  blue  tartan  yet?" 

"Ada  Brown  bought  seven  yards  of  it." 

"Oh,  Peter!     And  trimmings?" 

"Six  yards  of  black  velvet  ribbon  —  yes,  I 
forgot  —  Mrs.  Blackman  is  to  make  it  up  for 
her.  I  heard  Mrs.  Brown  say  she  would  call 
for  the  linings." 

"She's  having  it  made  up  for  Jim  Harvey's 
birthday,"  Ellen  guessed  shrewdly.  "He's 
twenty-one,  you  know.  .  .  .  People  say 
she's  engaged  to  him." 

Peter  felt  the  walls  of  the  House  which  had 


16  The  Lovely  Lady 

stood  out  waiting  for  him  during  this  interlude, 
fall  inward  into  the  gulf  of  blackness.  Nobody 
said  anything  for  two  or  three  ticks  of  the  large 
kitchen  clock,  and  then  Ellen  burst  out: 

"I  think  she's  a  nasty,  flirty,  stuck-up  thing; 
that's  what  I  think!" 

"Shs  —  hss!  Ellen,"  said  her  mother. 
" Peter,"  demanded  Ellen,  "are  you  reading 
again?" 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  Ellen."     Peter  did  not 
know  that  he  had  turned  a  page. 

"Don't  you  ever  wish  for  anything  for  your 
self,  Peter?     Don't  you  wish  you  were  rich?  " 
"No,  Ellen,  I  don't  know  that  I  ever  do." 
But  as  the  winter  got  on  and  the  news  of 
Ada  Brown's  engagement  was  confirmed,  he 
must  have  wished  it  a  great  many  times. 

One  evening  late  in  January  he  was  sitting 
with  his  mother  very  quietly  by  the  kitchen 
stove,  the  front  of  which  was  opened  to  throw 
out  the  heat;  there  was  the  good  smell  of  the 
supper  in  the  room,  for  though  he  had  a  meal 
with  the  Greenslets  at  six,  his  mother  always 
made  a  point  of  having  something  hot  for  him 
when  he  came  in  from  bedding  down  the  mare, 


The  Lovely  Lady  17 

and  the  steam  of  it  on  the  window-panes  made 
dull  smears  of  the  reflected  light.  The  shade 
of  the  lamp  was  drawn  down  until  the  ceiling 
of  the  room  was  all  in  shadow  save  for  the 
bright  escape  from  the  chimney  which  shone 
directly  overhead,  round  and  yellow  as  twenty 
dollars,  and  as  Peter  leaned  back  in  his  chair, 
looking  up,  it  might  have  been  that  resem 
blance  which  gave  a  turn  to  his  thoughts  and 
led  him  to  say  to  his  mother: 

"Why  did  my  father  never  get  rich?" 

"I  hardly  know,  Peter.  He  used  to  say 
that  he  couldn't  afford  it.  There  were  so 
many  other  things  he  wished  to  do;  and  I 
wished  them,  too.  When  we  were  young  we 
did  them  together.  Then  your  father  was 
the  sort  of  man  who  always  gave  too  much  and 
took  too  little.  I  remember  his  saying  once 
that  no  one  who  loved  his  fellowman  very 
much,  could  get  rich." 

"Do  you  wish  he  had?" 

"I  don't  know  that  either.  No,  not  if  he 
was  happier  the  way  he  was.  And  we  were 
happy.  Things  would  have  come  out  all  right 
if  it  hadn't  been  for  the  accident  when  the 


18  The  Lovely  Lady 

thresher  broke,  and  his  being  ill  so  long  after 
ward.  And  my  people  weren't  so  kind  as  they 
might  have  been.  You  see,  they  always 
thought  him  a  little  queer.  Before  we  were 
married,  before  we  were  even  engaged,  he  had 
had  a  little  money.  It  had  been  left  him,  and 
instead  of  investing  it  as  anybody  in  Bloom- 
bury  would,  he  spent  it  in  travel.  I  remember 
his  saying  that  his  memories  of  Italy  were  the 
best  investment  he  could  have  made.  But 
afterward,  when  he  was  in  trouble,  they  threw 
it  up  to  him.  We  had  never  got  in  debt 
before  .  .  .  and  then  just  as  he  was  get 
ting  round,  he  took  bronchitis  and  died." 

She  wiped  her  eyes  quietly  for  a  while,  and 
the  kettle  on  the  stove  began  to  sing  soothingly* 
and  presently  Peter  ventured : 
"Do  you  wish  I  would  get  rich?" 
"Yes,  Peter,  I  do.  We  are  all  like  that,  I 
suppose,  we  grown-ups.  Things  we  manage  to 
get  along  without  ourselves,  we  want  for  our 
children.  I  hope  you  will  be  a  rich  man  some 
day;  but,  Peter,  I  don't  want  you  to  think  it  a 
reflection  on  your  father  that  he  wasn't.  He 
had  what  he  thought  was  best.  He  might 


The  Lovely  Lady  19 

have  left  me  with  more  money  and  fewer  happy 
memories  —  and  that  is  what  women  value 
most,  Peter;  —  the  right  sort  of  women.  There 
are  some  who  can't  get  along  without  things: 
clothes,  and  furniture,  and  carriages.  Ada 
Brown  is  that  kind;  sometimes  I'm  afraid 
Ellen  is  a  little.  She  takes  after  my  family." 

"It  is  partly  on  account  of  Ellen  that  I  want 
to  get  rich." 

"You  mustn't  take  it  too  hard,  Peter;  we've 
always  got  along  somehow,  and  nobody  in 
Bloombury  is  very  rich." 

Peter  turned  that  over  in  his  mind  the  whole 
of  a  raw  and  sleety  February.  And  one  day 
when  nobody  came  into  the  store  from  ten  till 
four,  and  loose  winds  went  in  a  pack  about  the 
village  streets,  casting  up  dry,  icy  dust  where 
now  and  then  some  sharp  muzzle  reared  out 
of  the  press  as  they  turned  the  corners,  he  spoke 
to  Mr.  Greenslet  about  it.  It  was  so  cold  that 
day  that  neither  the  red  apples  in  the  barrels 
nor  the  crimson  cranberries  nor  the  yellowing 
hams  on  the  rafters  could  contribute  any 
appearance  of  warmth  to  the  interior  of  the 
grocery.  A  kind  of  icy  varnish  of  cold  overlaid 


£0  The  Lovely  Lady 

the  gay  lables  of  the  canned  goods;  the  rem 
nants  of  red  and  blue  tartan  exposed  for  sale 
looked  coarse-grained  with  the  cold,  and  cold 
slips  of  ribbons  clung  to  the  glass  of  the  cases 
like  the  tongues  of  children  tipped  to  the  frosted 
panes.  Even  the  super-heated  stove  took  on  a 
purplish  tinge  of  chilblains,  roughed  by  the 
wind. 

A  kind  of  arctic  stillness  pervaded  the  place, 
out  of  which  the  two  men  hailed  each  other  at 
intervals  as  from  immeasurable  deeps  of  space. 

"Mr.  Greenslet,"  ventured  Peter  at  last, 
"are  you  a  rich  man?" 

"Not  by  a  long  sight." 

"Why?"  questioned  Peter. 

"Not  built  that  way." 

The  grocer  lapsed  back  into  the  silence  and 
seemed  to  lean  against  it  meditatively.  The 
wolf  wind  howled  about  the  corners  and  cast 
snow  like  powdered  glass  upon  the  windows 
contemptuously,  and  time  went  by  with  a  large 
deliberate  movement  like  a  fat  man  turning 
over,  before  Peter  hailed  again. 

"Did  you  ever  want  to  be?" 

Mr.  Greenslet  reached  out  for  the  damper  of 


The  Lovely  Lady  21 

the  stove  ostensibly  to  shake  down  the  ashes, 
but  really  to  pull  himself  up  out  of  the  soundless 
spaces  of  thought. 

"When  I  was  your  age,  yes.  Thought  I  was 
going  to  be."  The  shaking  of  the  damper 
seemed  to  loosen  the  springs  of  speech  in  him. 
"I  was  up  in  the  city  working  for  Siegel  Broth 
ers;  began  as  a  bundle  boy  and  meant  to  be  one 
of  the  partners.  But  by  the  time  I  worked  up 
to  fancy  goods  I  realized  that  I  would  have  to 
be  as  old  as  Methuselah  to  make  it  at  that  rate. 
And  Mrs.  Greenslet  didn't  like  the  city;  she 
was  a  Bloombury  girl.  It  wasn't  any  place 
for  the  children." 

"So  you  came  back?" 

"We  had  saved  a  little.  I  bought  out  this 
place  and  put  in  a  few  notions  I'd  got  from 
SiegePs.  I'm  comfortably  off,  but  I'm  not 
rich." 

"Would  you  like  to  be?" 

"I  don'  know,  I  don'  know.  I'd  like  to  give 
the  boys  a  better  start  than  I  had,  but  I'm  my 
own  boss  here  and  one  of  the  leading  men. 
That's  always  something." 

Peter  went  and  looked  out  of  the  smudged 


22  The  Lovely  Lady 

windows  while  he  considered  this.  The  long 
scrapes  of  the  wind  in  the  loose  snow  were  like 
the  scratches  of  great  claws.  It  was  now  about 
mail  time  and  a  few  people  began  to  stir  in  the 
street;  the  clear  light  and  the  cold  gave  them  a 
poverty -bitten  look. 

44  Does  anybody  ever  get  rich  in  Bloom- 
bury?" 

"Not  that  I  know  of.  There's  Mr.  Dasson- 
ville  in  Harmony  —  Dave  Dassonville,  the  rich 
est  man  in  these  parts." 

"I  suppose  he  could  tell  me  how  to  go  about 
it?" 

"I  suppose  he  would  if  he  knows.  Mostly 
these  things  just  happen." 

Peter  did  not  say  anything  more  just  then; 
he  was  watching  a  man  and  a  girl  of  about  his 
own  age  who  had  come  out  of  a  frame  house 
farther  down  the  street.  The  young  man  was 
walking  so  as  to  shield  her  from  the  wind,  her 
rosy  cheek  was  at  his  shoulder,  and  she  smiled 
up  at  him  over  her  muff,  from  dark,  bright  eyes. 

"What's  set  you  on  to  talk  about  riches? 
Thinking  of  doing  something  in  that  line  your 
self?" 


The  Lovely  Lady  23 

"Yes,"  said  Peter,  kicking  at  the  baseboard 
with  his  toes.  "I  don't  know  how  it  is  to  be 
done,  but  I've  got  to  be  rich.  I've  just  simply 
got  to." 


II 


It  was  along  in  the  beginning  of  spring  on  a 
day  full  of  wet  cloud  and  clearing  wind,  that 
Peter  walked  over  to  Harmony  to  inquire  of  Mr. 
David  Dassonville  the  way  to  grow  rich.  It 
was  Sunday  afternoon  and  the  air  sweet  with 
the  sap  adrip  from  the  orchards  lately  pruned 
and  the  smell  of  the  country  road  dried  to 
elasticity  by  the  winds  of  March. 

Between  timidity  and  the  conviction  that  a 
week  day  would  have  been  better  suited  to  his 
business,  he  drew  on  to  the  place  of  his  errand 
very  slowly,  for  he  was  sore  with  the  raking  of 
the  dragon's  claws,  and  unrested.  It  had  been 
a  terrible  scrape  to  get  together  the  last  instal 
ment  of  interest,  and  since  Ellen  had  shattered 
it  with  the  gossip  about  Ada  Brown's  engage 
ment,  there  had  been  no  House  with  Shining 
Walls  for  Peter  to  withdraw  into  out  of  the 


24  The  Lovely  Lady 

dragon's  breath  of  poverty;  above  all,  no  Prin 
cess. 

He  did  not  know  where  the  House  had  come 
from  any  more  than  he  knew  now  where  it  had 
gone.  It  was  a  gift  out  of  his  childhood  to  his 
shy,  unfriended  youth,  but  he  understood  that 
if  ever  its  walls  should  waver  and  rise  again  to 
enclose  his  dreams,  there  would  be  no  Princess. 
Never  any  more.  Princesses  were  for  fairy 
tales;  girls  wanted  Things.  There  was  his 
mother  too  —  he  had  wished  so  to  get  her  a 
new  dress  this  winter.  It  was  an  ache  to  him 
to  cut  off  yards  and  yards  of  handsome  stuffs 
at  Mr.  Greenslet's,  and  all  the  longing  in  the 
world  had  not  availed  to  get  one  of  them  for  his 
mother.  Plainly  the  mastery  of  Things  was 
accomplished  by  being  rich;  he  was  on  his  way 
to  Mr.  Dassonville  to  find  out  how  it  was  done. 

It  was  quite  four  of  the  clock  when  he  paused 
at  the  bottom  of  the  Dassonville  lawn  to  look 
up  at  the  lace  curtains  at  the  tall  French  win 
dows.  Nobody  in  Bloombury  was  rich  enough 
to  have  lace  curtains  at  all  the  windows,  and 
the  boy's  spirit  rose  at  the  substantial  evidence 
of  being  at  last  fairly  in  the  track  of  his  desire. 


The  Lovely  Lady  25 

He  found  Mr.  Dassonville  willing  to  receive 
him  in  quite  a  friendly  way,  sitting  in  his  library., 
keeping  the  place  with  his  finger  in  the  book 
he  had  been  reading  to  his  wife.  Peter  also 
found  himself  a  little  at  a  loss  to  know  how  to 
begin  in  the  presence  of  this  lady,  for  he  con 
sidered  it  a  matter  quite  between  men,  but 
suddenly  she  looked  up  and  smiled.  It  came 
out  on  her  face  fresh  and  delicately  as  an  apple 
orchard  breaking  to  bloom,  and  besides  making 
it  quite  spring  in  the  room,  discovered  in  herself 
a  new  evidence  of  the  competency  of  Mr.  David 
Dassonville  to  advise  the  way  of  riches.  She 
looked  fragile  and  expensive  as  she  sat  in  her 
silken  shawl,  her  dark  hair  lifted  up  in  a  half 
moon  from  her  brow,  her  hands  lying  in  her 
lap  half-covered  with  the  lace  of  her  sleeves, 
white  and  perfect  like  twin  flowers.  He  saw 
rings  flashing  on  the  one  she  lifted  to  motion  to 
the  maid  to  bring  a  chair. 

"If  you  have  walked  over  from  Bloombury 
you  must  be  tired,"  she  said,  "and  chilled,  per 
haps.  Come  nearer  the  fire." 

"No,  thank  you,"  Peter  had  managed,  "I 
am  quite  warm,"  as  in  fact  he  was,  and  a  little 


26  The  Lovely  Lady 

flushed.    He  sat  down  provisionally  on  the  edge 
of  the  chair  and  looked  at  Mr.  Dassonville. 

"I  came  on  business.  I  don't  know  if  you 
will  mind  its  being  Sunday,  but  I  couldn't  get 
away  from  the  store  on  other  days." 

"Quite  right,  quite  right."  Mr.  Dassonville 
had  lost  his  place  in  the  book  and  laid  it  on  his 
knee.  "Private  business?  My  dear,  per 
haps—" 

"Oh,  no  —  no,"  protested  Peter  handsomely. 
"I'd  rather  she  stayed.  It  isn't.  At  least 

.     .     I  don't  know  if  you  will  consider  it 
private  or  not." 
."Go  on,"  urged  Mr.  Dassonville. 

"I  just  came  to  ask  you,"  Peter  explained, 
*{if  you  don't  mind  telling  me,  how  you  got 


,  "But  bless  you,  young  man,"  exclaimed  Mr. 
Dassonville,  "I'm  not  rich." 

This  for  a  beginning,  was,  on  the  face  of  it5 
disconcerting.  Peter  looked  about  at  the  rows 
of  books,  at  the  thick,  soft  carpet  and  the  leather- 
covered  furniture,  and  at  the  rings  on  Mrs. 
Dassonville's  hand.  If  Mr.  Dassonville  were 
not  rich,  how  then  —  unless  - 


The  Lovely  Lady  27 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,  but  I  thought  —  that 
is,  everybody  says  you  are  the  richest  man  in  ' 
these  parts." 

"As  to  that,  well,  perhaps,  I  have  a  little 
more  money  than  my  neighbours." 

Peter  breathed  relief.  The  beautiful  Mrs. 
Dassonville's  rings  were  paid  for,  then. 

"But  as  to  being  rich,  why,  when  you  come 
to  a  really  rich  man  all  I've  got  wouldn't  be  a 
pinch  to  him."  Mr.  Dassonville  illustrated 
with  his  own  thumb  and  fingers  how  little  that 
would  be.  "We  don't  have  really  rich  men  in 
a  place  like  Harmony,"  he  concluded.  "You 
have  to  go  to  the  city  for  that." 

"You've  got  everything  you  want,  haven't 
you?" 

Mr.  Dassonville  looked  over  at  his  wife, 
and  the  smile  bloomed  again;  he  smiled  quietly 
to  himself  as  he  admitted  it.  "Yes,  I've  got 
everything  I  want." 

They  were  quiet,  all  of  them,  for  a  little  while, 
with  Peter  turning  his  hat  over  in  his  hands 
and  Mr.  Dassonville  laying  the  tips  of  his 
fingers  together  before  him,  resting  his  elbows 
on  the  arms  of  the  chair. 


28  The  Lovely  Lady 

"I  wish,"  said  Peter  at  last,  "y°u  would  tell 
me  how  you  did  it." 

"How  I  got  more  money  than  my  neighbours? 
Well,  I  wasn't  born  with  it." 

This  was  distinctly  encouraging.  Neither 
was  Peter. 

"No  two  men,  I  suppose,  make  money  in  the 
same  way,"  went  on  the  man  who  had,  "but 
there  are  three  or  four  things  to  be  observed 
by  all  of  them.  In  the  first  place  one  must  be 
very  hard-working." 

"Yes,"  said  Peter. 

"And  one  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  object 
worked  for.  Not"  —  as  if  he  had  followed 
the  boy's  inward  drop  of  dismay  —  "that  a 
man  should  think  of  nothing  but  getting  money. 
On  the  contrary,  I  consider  it  very  essential  for 
a  man  to  have  some  escape  from  his  business, 
some  change  of  pasture  to  run  his  mind  in.  He 
comes  fresher  to  his  work  so.  What  I  mean  is 
that  when  he  works  he  must  make  every  stroke 
count  toward  the  end  he  has  in  view.  Do  you 
understand?" 

"I  think  so."  The  House  and  the  Shining 
Walls  were  safe,  at  any  rate. 


The  Lovely  Lady  29 

"And  then,"  Mr.  Dassonville  checked  off 
the  points  on  his  fingers,  "he  must  always  save 
something  from  his  income,  no  matter  how 
small  it  is." 

"I  try  to  do  that,"  confessed  Peter," but  what 
with  Ellen's  back  being  bad,  and  the  interest  on 
the  mortgage,  it's  not  so  easy." 

"Is  there  a  mortgage?  I  am  sorry  for  that, 
for  the  next  thing  I  was  going  to  say  is  that  he 
must  never  go  into  debt,  never  on  any  account." 

"My  father  was  sick;  it  was  an  accident," 
Peter  protested  loyally. 

"So!  I  think  I  remember.  Well,  it  is  un 
fortunate,  but  where  there  is  a  debt  the  only 
thing  is  to  reduce  it  as  steadily  as  possible,  and 
if  this  mortgage  teaches  you  the  trick  of  saving 
it  may  not  be  such  a  bad  thing  for  you.  But 
when  a  man  works  and  saves  for  a  long  time 
without  getting  any  sensible  benefit,  he  some 
times  thinks  that  saving  and  working  are  not 
worth  while.  You  must  never  make  that 
mistake." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Peter.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
they  were  getting  on  very  well  indeed. 

"There  is  another  thing  I  should  like  to  say/* 


30  The  Lovely  Lady 

Mr.  Dassonville  went  on,  "but  I  am  not  sure 
I  can  put  it  plainly.  It  is  that  you  must  not 
try  to  be  too  wise."  He  smiled  a  little  to 
Peter's  blankness.  "I  believe  in  Harmony  it  is 
called  looking  on  all  sides  of  a  thing,  but  there  is 
always  one  side  of  everything  like  the  moon 
which  is  turned  from  us.  You  must  just  start 
from  where  you  are  and  keep  moving." 

"I  see,"  said  Peter,  looking  thoughtfully  into 
the  fire,  in  imitation  of  Mr.  Dassonville.  And 
there  being  no  more  advice  forthcoming  he 
began  to  wonder  if  he  ought  to  sit  a  while  from 
politeness,  as  people  did  in  Bloombury,  or  go 
at  once.  Mrs.  Dassonville  got  up  and  came 
behind  her  husband's  chair. 

"Don't  you  think  you  ought  to  tell  him, 
David,  that  there  are  other  things  worth  hav 
ing  besides  money;  better  worth?" 

"You,  perhaps."  Mr.  Dassonville  took  the 
hand  of  his  wife  laid  on  his  shoulder  and  held  it 
against  his  cheek;  it  brought  out  for  Peter 
suddenly,  how  many  years  younger  she  was, 
and  what  he  had  heard  of  Mr.  Dassonville 
having  married  her  from  among  the  summer 
folk  who  came  to  Harmony  for  the  pine  woods 


The  Lovely  Lady  31 

and  the  sea  air.  "Ah,  but  I'm  not  sure  I'd 
have  you  without  a  great  deal  of  it.  It  takes 
money  to  raise  rare  plants  like  you.  But  I 
ought  to  say,"  still  holding  his  wife's  hand  to 
his  cheek  and  watching  Peter  across  it,  "that  I 
think  it  is  a  very  good  sign  that  you  are  willing 
to  ask.  The  most  of  poor  men  will  sit  about 
and  rail  and  envy  the  rich,  but  hardly  one  would 
think  to  ask  how  it  is  done,  or  believe  if  he 
were  told.  They've  a  notion  it's  all  gouging 
and  luck,  and  you  couldn't  beat  that  out  of 
them  if  you  tried.  Very  few  of  them  under 
stand  how  simple  success  is;  it  isn't  easy  often, 
but  it  is  always  simple." 

Peter  supposed  that  he  really  ought  to  go 
after  that,  though  he  did  not  know  how  to  man 
age  it  until  Mrs.  Dassonville  smiled  at  him  over 
her  husband's  shoulder  and  asked  him  what 
sort  of  work  he  did.  "Oh,  if  you  know  about 
gardens,"  she  interrupted  him,  "you  can  help 
a  little.  There  are  such  a  lot  of  things  coming 
up  in  mine  that  I  don't  know  the  names  of." 

It  flashed  out  to  Peter  long  afterward  that 
she  had  simply  provided  an  easy  way  for  him 
to  get  out  of  the  house  now  that  his  visit  was 


32  The  Lovely  Lady 

terminated.  She  held  the  white  fold  of  her 
shawl  over  her  head  with  one  hand  and  gathered 
the  trailing  skirts  with  the  other.  They  rustled 
as  she  moved  like  the  leaves  of  the  elms  at  night 
above  the  roof,  as  she  led  him  along  the  walk 
where  little  straight  spears  of  green  and  blunt 
flower  crowns  faintly  tinged  with  colour  came 
up  thickly  in  the  borders.  So  by  degrees  she 
got  him  down  past  the  hyacinth  beds  and  the 
nodding  buds  of  the  daffodils  to  the  gate  and 
on  the  road  again,  walking  home  in  the  chill 
early  twilight  with  the  pricking  of  a  pleasant 
excitement  in  his  veins. 

It  was  that,  perhaps,  and  the  sense  of  having 
got  so  much  more  out  of  it  than  any  account  of 
his  visit  would  justify,  that  kept  Peter  from 
saying  much  to  his  mother  that  night  about  his 
talk  with  the  rich  man;  he  asked  her  instead  if 
she  had  ever  seen  Mrs.  Dassonville. 

"Yes,"  she  assured  him.  "Mr.  Dassonville 
drove  her  over  to  Mrs.  Tillinghurst's  [funeral 
in  October.  They  had  only  been  married  a 
little  while  then;  she  is  the  second  Mrs.  Dasson 
ville,  you  know;  the  first  died  years  ago.  I 
thought  her  a  very  lovely  lady." 


The  Lovely  Lady  33 

"A  lovely  lady,"  Peter  said  the  phrase  under 
his  breath.  The  sound  of  it  was  like  the  soft 
drawing  of  silken  skirts. 

His  mother  looked  at  him  across  the  supper 
table  and  was  pleased  to  see  the  renewal  of 
cheerfulness,  and  then,  motherlike,  sighed  to 
think  that  Peter  was  getting  so  old  now  that  if 
he  didn't  choose  to  tell  her  things  she  had  no 
right  to  ask  him.  "Your  walk  has  done  you 
good,"  was  all  she  said,  and  it  must  have  been 
the  case,  for  that  very  night  as  soon  as  his  head 
had  touched  the  pillow  he  was  off  again,  as  he 
hadn't  been  since  Ellen  fell  ill,  to  the  House  of 
the  Shining  Walls.  It  rose  stately  against 
a  blur  of  leafless  woods  and  crocus-coloured 
sky.  The  garden  before  it  was  all  full  of  spring 
bulbs  and  the  scent  of  daffodils.  The  Princess 
came  walking  in  it  as  before,  but  she  was  no 
Princess  now,  merely  a  woman  with  her  dark 
hair  brushed  up  in  a  half  moon  from  her  brow 
and  her  skirts  drawing  after  her  with  a  silken 
rustle;  her  face  was  dim  and  sweet,  with  only  a 
faint,  a  very  faint,  reminder  of  Ada,  and  her 
name  was  the  Lovely  Lady. 


PART  TWO 

IN  WHICH  PETER 

BECOMES  INVISIBLE  ON  THE 

WAY  TO  GROWING  RICH 


PART  TWO 

IN   WHICH   PETER   BECOMES   INVISIBLE   ON 
THE   WAY   TO   GROWING   RICH 

IN  THE  late  summer  of  that  year  Peter  went  up 
to  the  city  with  Mr.  Greenslet  to  lay  in  his 
winter  stock  and  remained  in  canned  goods  with 
Siegel  Brothers'  Household  Emporium.  That 
his  mother  had  rented  the  farming  land  for  cash 
was  the  immediate  occasion  of  his  setting  out, 
but  there  were  several  other  reasons  and  a  great 
many  opinions.  Mr.  Greenslet  had  a  boy  of  his 
own  coming  on  for  Peter's  place;  Bet,  the  mare, 
had  died,  and  the  farm  implements  wanted  re 
newing;  in  spite  of  which  Mrs.  Weatheral  could 
hardly  have  made  up  her  mind  to  spare  him 
except  for  the  opportune  appearance  of  the  cash 
renter.  With  that  and  the  chickens  and  the 
sewing,  she  and  Ellen  could  take  care  of  them 
selves  and  the  interest,  which  would  leave  all  that 
Peter  could  make  to  count  against  the  mortgage. 

37 


38  The  Lovely  Lady 

They  put  it  hopefully  to  one  another  so,  as 
they  sat  about  the  kitchen  stove,  all  three  of 
them  holding  hands,  on  the  evening  before  his 
departure.  But  the  opinions,  which  were  rather 
thicker  at  Bloombury  than  opportunities,  were 
by  no  means  so  confident  as  Peter  could  have 
wished  if  he  had  known  them.  Mr.  Greenslet 
thought  it  couldn't  be  much  worse  than  Peter's 
present  situation,  and  the  neighbours  were  sure 
it  wasn't  much  better.  The  minister  had  a 
great  deal  to  say  of  the  temptations  of  a  young 
man  in  the  city,  which  was  afterward  invali 
dated  by  the  city's  turning  out  quite  another 
place  than  he  described  it. 

It  was  left  for  Ellen  and  Mrs.  Jim  Harvey 
to  make  the  happy  prognostication.  "You 
can  trust  Peter,"  Ada  was  confident. 

"But  you  got  to  be  mighty  cute  to  get  in 
with  those  city  fellows,"  her  husband  warned 
her,  "and  Peter's  so  dashed  simple;  never  sees 
anything  except  what's  right  in  front  of  him. 
Now  a  man"  —  Jim  assumed  this  estate  for 
himself  in  the  right  of  being  three  months  mar 
ried  —  "has  got  to  look  on  all  sides  of  a  thing." 

As  for  Ellen,  she  hadn't  the  slightest  doubt 


The  Lovely  Lady  39 

that  Peter  was  shortly  to  become  immensely 
wealthy  and  she  was  to  go  up  and  keep  house 
for  him. 

"There'll  be  gold  chairs  in  the  parlour  and 
real  Brussels,"  she  anticipated.  Peter  affected 
to  think  it  unlikely  that  she  could  be  spared  by 
the  highly  mythical  person  who  was  to  carry 
her  off  to  keep  house  for  himself.  Somehow 
Peter  could  never  fall  into  the  normal  Bloom- 
bury  attitude  of  thinking  that  if  you  had  hip 
disease,  your  life  was  bound  to  be  different  from 
everybody's  and  you  might  as  well  say  so  right 
out,  flat-footed,  and  be  done  with  it. 

With  all  this,  finally  he  was  got  off  to  the  city 
in  the  wake  of  Mr.  Greenslet,  and  the  first  dis 
covery  he  made  there  was  that  outside  of 
Siegel  Brothers,  and  a  collarless  man  with  a  dis 
couraged  moustache" who  appeared  in  the  hall  of 
his  lodging-house  when  the  rent  was  due,  he  was 
practically  invisible.  As  he  went  up  and  down 
the  stairs  sodden  with  scrub  water  which  never 
by  any  possible  chance  left  them  scrubbed, 
nobody  spoke  to  him.  Nobody  in  the  street 
saw  him  walking  to  and  fro  in  his  young  lone 
liness.  There  were  men  passing  there  with  faces 


40  The  Lovely  Lady 

like  Mr.  Dassonville's,  keen  and  competent, 
and  lovely  ladies  in  soft  becoming  wraps  and 
bright  winged  hats  —  such  hats !  Peter  would 
like  to  have  hailed  some  of  these  as  one  im 
measurably  behind  but  still  in  the  way,  seized 
of  that  precious  inward  quality  which  mani 
fests  itself  in  competency  and  brightness. 
He  would  have  liked  to  feel  them  looking  on 
friendlily  at  his  business  of  becoming  rich;  but 
he  remained,  as  far  as  any  word  from  them  was 
concerned,  completely  invisible.  He  came  after 
a  while  to  the  conclusion  that  most  of  those 
who  went  up  and  down  with  him  were  in  the 
same  unregarded  condition. 

The  city  appeared  quite  habituated  to  this 
state  of  affairs;  hordes  of  them  came  and  went 
unconfronted  between  banked  windows  of 
warmth  and  loveliness,  past  doors  from  which 
light  and  music  overflowed  into  the  dim  street 
in  splashes  of  colour  and  sound,  where  people 
equally  under  the  prohibition  lapped  them  up 
hungrily  like  dogs  at  puddles.  Sometimes  in 
the  street  cars  or  subways  he  brushed  against 
fair  girls  from  whom  the  delicate  aroma  of 
personality  was  like  a  waft  out  of  that  country 


The  Lovely  Lady  41 

of  which  his  preferences  and  appreciations 
acknowledged  him  a  native,  but  no  smallest 
flutter  of  kinship  ever  put  forth  from  them  to 
Peter.  The  place  was  crammed  full  of  every 
thing  that  anybody  could  want  and  nobody 
could  get  at  it,  at  least  not  Peter,  nor  anybody 
he  knew  at  Siegel  Brothers.  And  at  the  lodging 
house  they  seemed  never  to  have  heard  of 
the  un diminished  heaps  of  splendour  that  lay 
piled  behind  plate  glass  and  polished  counters. 
It  was  extraordinary,  incredible,  that  he  wasn't 
to  have  the  least  of  them. 

As  the  winter  closed  in  on  him,  the  restric 
tions  of  daily  living  rose  so  thick  upon  him  that 
they  began  to  prevent  him  from  his  dreams. 
He  could  no  longer  get  through  them  to  the 
House  with  the  Shining  Walls.  Often  as  he 
lay  in  his  bed  trying  to  believe  he  was  warm 
enough,  he  would  set  off  for  it  down  the  lanes 
of  blinding  city  light  through  which  the  scream 
of  the  trolley  pursued  him,  only  to  see  it  glim 
mer  palely  on  him  through  impenetrable  plate 
glass,  or  defended  from  him  by  huge  trespass 
signs  that  appeared  to  have  some  relation  to 
the  fact  that  he  was  not  yet  so  rich  as  he 


42  The  Lovely  Lady 

expected  to  be.  Times  when  he  would  wake 
out  of  his  sleep,  it  would  be  to  a  strange  sense 
of  severances  and  loss,  and  though  he  did  not 
know  exactly  what  ailed  him,  it  was  the  loss  of 
all  his  dreams.  After  a  while  the  whole  city 
seemed  to  ache  with  that  loss.  He  would  lie 
in  his  narrow  bed  and  think  that  if  he  did  not 
see  his  mother  and  Bloombury  again  he  would 
probably  die  of  it. 

Then  along  in  the  beginning  of  April  some 
body  saw  him.  It  was  in  the  dusk  between 
supper  and  bed  time,  walking  on  the  viaduct 
where  he  had  the  park  below  him.  There  was 
a  wash  of  blue  still  in  the  sky  and  a  thin  blade 
of  a  moon  tinging  it  with  citron ;  here  and  there 
the  light  glittered  on  the  trickle  of  sap  on  the 
chafed  boughs.  It  was  just  here  that  he  met  her. 
She  was  about  his  own  age,  and  she  was  walking 
oddly,  as  though  unconscious  of  the  city  all 
about  her,  with  short  picked  steps,  and  her  hat 
with  the  tilt  to  it  of  a  girl  who  knows  herself  ad 
mired.  She  had  a  rose  at  her  breast  which  she 
straightened  now  and  then,  or  smoothed  a  fold 
of  her  dress  and  hummed  as  she  walked.  Her 
cheeks  were  bright  even  in  the  dusk,  and  some 


The  Lovely  Lady  43 

strange,  quick  fear  kept  pace  with  her  glancing. 
Peter  was  walking  heavily  himself,  as  the  young 
do  when  the  dreams  have  gone  out  of  them,  and 
as  they  passed  in  the  light  of  the  arc  that  danced 
delicately  to  the  wandering  air,  the  girl's  look 
skimmed  him  like  a  swallow.  She  must  have 
turned  just  beliind  him,  for  in  a  moment  she 
drifted  past  his  shoulder. 

"Hello!"  she  said. 

"Hello!"; said  Peter,  but,  in  the  moment  it 
had  taken  to  drag  that  up  from  under  his  aston 
ishment,  she  had  passed  him;  her  laugh  as  she 
went  brushed  the  tip  of  his  youth  like  a  swal 
low's  wing.  It  remained  with  him  as  a  little, 
far  spark;  it  seemed  as  if  a  dream  was  about  to 
spin  itself  out  from  it.  He  went  around  that 
way  several  times  on  his  evening  walks  in  hopes 
that  he  might  meet  her  again. 

As  though  the  spark  had  lightened  a  little  of 
the  blank  unrecognition  with  which  the  city 
met  him,  he  was  seen  that  day  and  in  no  un 
friendly  aspect  by  "our  Mr.  Croker"  of  Siegel 
Brothers.  The  running  gear  of  a  great  con 
cern  like  the  Household  Emporium  pressed,  in 
the  days  of  Peter's  apprenticeship,  unequally  at 


44  The  Lovely  Lady 

times  on  its  employees,  and  the  galled  spot  of 
the  canned  goods  department  was  Blinders  the 
bundle  boy.  His  other  name  was  Horace  and 
he  was  chiefly  remarkable  for  pimples  which  he 
seemed  to  think  interesting,  and  for  a  state  of 
active  resentment  against  anybody  who  gave 
him  anything  to  do.  The  world  for  Horace 
was  a  dark  jungle  full  of  grouches  and  pulls 
and  privilege  and  devious  guile. 

That  the  propensity  which  Peter  had  de 
veloped  for  inquiring  every  half  hour  or  so  if  he 
hadn't  got  that  done  yet,  could  be  nothing  else 
but  a  cabal  directed  against  Blinders'  four 
dollars  and  a  half  a  week,  he  was  convinced.  In 
all  the  time  that  he  could  spare  from  his  pim 
ples,  Horace  rehearsed  a  martyr's  air  de 
signed  to  convey  to  Mr.  Croker  that  though 
he  would  suffer  in  silence  he  was  none  the  less 
suffering.  It  being  precisely  Mr.  Croker's 
business  to  rap  out  grouches  as  an  expert 
mechanician  taps  defective  cogs,  it  happened 
the  day  after  Peter's  meeting  with  the  girl  that 
the  worst  hopes  of  Horace  were  realized. 

"Aw,  they're  always  a  pickin'  on  me,  Mr. 
Croker,  that's  what  they  are,  Mr.  Croker," 


The  Lovely  Lady  45 

Horace  defended  himself,  preparing  to  snivel 
if  the  occasion  seemed  to  demand  it,  by  taking 
out  his  gum  and  sticking  it  on  the  inside  of  his 
sleeve.  "I  can't  handle  'em  no  faster,  Mr. 
Croker." 

"Not  the  way  you  go  at  it,"  Peter  assured 
him.  Anybody  could  have  told  by  the  way  he 
included  Mr.  Croker  in  his  cheerfulness  that 
there  was  something  between  them.  "You 
turn  'em  over  too  many  times  and  you  use  too 
much  paper  and  too  much  string."  Suddenly 
Peter  reddened  with  embarrassment.  "Not 
that  that  makes  any  difference  to  a  big  firm 
like  this,"  he  apologized,  "but  in  a  small  place 
every  little  counts."  He  turned  the  package 
deftly  and  began  to  illustrate  his  method. 
"When  you're  tying  up  calico  with  one  hand 
and  taking  in  eggs  and  butter  with  the  other 
and  telling  three  people  the  price  of  things  at 
the  same  time,"  he  explained,  "you  have  to 
notice  things  like  this." 

"I  see,"  said  Mr.  Croker.  "You  try  it, 
Blinders." 

"Aw,  what's  the  matter  with  the  way  I  was 
doin'  it?"  wailed  Horace. 


46  The  Lovely  Lady 

"If  you   don't  feel   quite    up   to    it  — 
Mr.  Croker  hinted.     Horace  did,   he  wrapped 
with  alacrity  and  Peter  showed  him  how  to  hold 
the  string. 

"You  come  along  with  me,  Weatheral," 
Mr.  Croker  commanded.  Horace  took  his 
gum  out  of  his  cuff  and  made  dark  prognostica 
tion  as  to  what  was  probably  to  be  done  to 
Peter. 

What  Peter  thought  was  that  he  should 
probably  become  very  unpopular  with  his 
fellow  clerks.  Croker  took  him  across  to  dry 
goods,  where  girls  were  tying  bundles  in  little 
cages  over  the  sales  ladies'  heads,  and  had  him 
repeat  the  method  of  handling  string.  Except 
that  he  thought  he  should  get  to  like  Mr. 
Croker,  the  incident  made  no  particular  im 
pression  on  Peter  —  so  dulled  were  all  his  senses 
for  want  of  dreams,  —  and  passed  wholly  out  of 
mind. 

It  was  two  or  three  days  after  that  he  saw 
the  girl  again,  nearer  the  end  of  the  viaduct, 
where  four  or  five  streets  poured  light  and  con 
fusion  into  Venable  Square.  She  was  going 
on  ahead,  hurrying  and  pretending  not  to  hurry 


The  Lovely  Lady  47 

to  overtake  a  man  to  whom  she  wished  to  speak. 
She  was  quite  close  to  him,  she  was  speaking, 
and  suddenly  he  gave  a  little  outward  jerk  with 
his  elbow  which  caught  hers  unexpectedly  and 
whirled  her  back  against  the  parapet.  The  little 
purse  she  was  carrying  fell  from  her  hand.  The 
man  gave  a  quick  laugh  over  his  shoulder  and 
ploughed  his  way  across  the  street. 

"  The  skunk ! "  Peter's  list  of  expletives  was 
not  extensive.  He  picked  up  the  flat  little 
purse  and  handed  it  back  to  her.  "Shall  I  go 
after  him?  Did  you  know  him?" 

The  girl  was  holding  on  to  the  parapet  with 
a  little  choky  laugh.  "Oh,  yes,  I  know  that 
kind.  No,  I  don't  want  him!" 

"He  ought  to  have  a  good  thrashing,"  Peter 
was  convinced.  The  girl  looked  up  at  him 
with  a  sudden  curiosity. 

"You're  from  the  country,  ain't  you?  I 
thought  so  the  other  night.  I  can  always 
tell." 

"I  guess  you're  from  the  country  yourself," 
Peter  hazarded.  She  was  prettier  even  than 
he  had  thought.  Her  glance  had  left  his, 
however,  and  was  roving  up  and  down  the 


48  The  Lovely  Lady 

hurrying  crowd  as  though  testing  it  for  some 
plunge  she  was  about  to  make. 

"If  you  wanted  me  to  see  you  home " 

Peter  hinted;  he  did  not  know  quite  what  was 
expected  of  him.  She  answered  with  a  little 
sharp  noise  which  ended  in  a  cough. 

"I  guess  you're  real  kind,"  she  admitted, 
"but  I  ain't  goin'  home  just  yet.  I  got  a  date." 
She  moved  off  then,  and  since  it  was  in  the 
direction  he  was  going,  there  was  nothing  for 
Peter  to  do  but  move  with  her,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  wide  pavement.  At  the  turn  she  drifted 
back  to  his  side  again;  it  seemed  to  Peter  there 
was  amusement  in  her  tone. 

"You  got  anything  to  do  Saturday  about  this 
time?"  Peter  hadn't.  "Well,  I'll  be  here 
—  savvy?"  But  before  he  could  make  her 
any  assurance  she  laughed  again  and  slipped 
into  the  crowd. 

Peter  knew  a  great  many  facts  about  life. 
There  were  human  failings  even  in  Bloombury, 
and  what  Peter  didn't  know  about  the  city  had 
been  largely  made  up  to  him  by  the  choice 
conversation  of  J.  Wilkinson  Cohn,  in  staples, 
at  the  next  counter  to  him.  Anybody  who 


The  Lovely  Lady  49 

listened  long  enough  to  J.  Wilkinson's  personal 
reminiscences  would  have  found  himself  fully 
instructed  for  every  possible  contingency  likely 
to  arise  between  a  gentleman  of  undoubted 
attractions  and  the  ladies,  but  there  are  forces 
in  youth  that  are  stronger  than  experience.  It 
is  a  very  old,  old  way  of  the  world  for  young 
things  to  walk  abroad  in  the  spring  and  meet 
one  another. 

Peter  strolled  along  the  viaduct  Saturday 
and  felt  his  youth  beat  in  him  pleasantly  when 
he  saw  her  come.  She  had  on  a  different  hat, 
and  the  earlier  hour  showed  him  the  shining 
of  her  eyes  above  the  raddled  cheeks. 

"We  could  go  down  in  the  park  a  piece,"  he 
suggested  as  they  turned  in  together  along  the 
parapet.  There  was  a  delicate  damp  smell 
coming  up  from  it  on  the  night,  like  the  Bloom- 
bury  lanes. 

"You're  regular  country,  aren't  you?"  There 
was  an  accent  of  impatience  in  her  tone,  "I 
haven't  had  my  supper  yet." 

"Well,  what  do  you  say  to  a  piece  of  roast 
beef  and  a  cup  of  coffee?"  Peter  had  planned 
this  magnificence  as  he  came  along  fingering 


50  The  Lovely  Lady 

his  pay  envelope.  He  knew  just  the  place,  he 
told  her.  The  feeling  of  his  proper  male 
ascendency  as  he  drew  her  through  the  crowd 
was  a  tonic  to  him;  the  man  tossing  pancakes 
in  the  window  where  he  hesitated  looking  for 
the  ladies'  entrance  seemed  quite  to  enjoy  doing 
it,  as  though  he  had  known  all  along  there  was 
to  be  company. 

"Oh,  I  don't  care  for  any  of  these  places." 
Peter  felt  her  pull  at  his  elbow.  "I'll  show 
you."  They  went  along  then,  brushing  lightly 
shoulder  to  shoulder  until  they  came  to  one  of 
those  revolving  doors  from  which  gusts  of 
music  issued.  There  was  a  girl  standing  up  to 
sing  as  they  sat  down  and  the  whole  air  of  the 
place  was  beyond  even  the  retailed  splendour  of 
J.  Wilkinson.  The  girl  threw  back  her  wraps 
and  began  to  order  freely.  Peter,  who  had 
a  glimpse  of  the  card,  stiffened. 

"I  —  I  guess  I'm  not  so  very  hungry,"  he 
cautioned.  She  looked  up  from  the  menu 
sharply  and  her  face  softened;  she  made  one  or 
two  deft  changes  in  it. 

"This  is  Dutch,  you  know,"  she  threw  out. 
"Oh,  I  know  you  invited  me,  but  you  didn't 


The  Lovely  Lady  51 

think  I  was  one  of  the  kind  that  let  a  strange 
gentleman  pay  for  my  dinner,  did  you?" 
Peter  denied  it,  stricken  with  embarrassment. 
She  seemed  in  the  light,  to  take  him  in  more 
completely. 

"Say,  would  you  have  licked  that  fellow  the 
other  night,  honest?" 

"Well,  if  he  was  disrespectful  to  a  lady " 

Peter  began. 

"Oh,  excuse  me ! "  She  turned  her  head  aside 
for  a  moment  in  her  long  gloves.  "You  are 
country!"  she  said  again,  but  it  seemed  not  to 
displease  her.  "I  don't  care  so  much  for  her 
voice,  do  you?"  She  turned  on  the  singer. 
They  discussed  the  entertainment  and  the 
dinner.  They  were  a  long  time  about  it.  The 
orchestra  played  a  waltz  at  last,  and  Ethel — 
she  had  told  him  to  call  her  that  —  put  her 
arms  on  the  table  and  leaned  across  to  him,  and 
though  Peter  knew  by  this  time  that  her 
cheeks  were  painted,  he  didn't  somehow  mind 
it. 

"What's  it  like  up  in  the  country  where  you 
lived?"  she  wished  to  know. 

"Hills  mostly,  little  wooded  ones,  and  high 


52  The  Lovely  Lady 

pastures,  and  the  apple  orchards  going  right  up 
over  them.  .  .  ." 

"I  know,"  she  nodded.  "I  guess  it's  them 
I  been  smelling  ...  or  laylocks." 

"Things  coming  up  in  the  garden,"  Peter 
contributed:  "peonies,  and  long  rows  of  daf 
fodils.  .  .  ."  He  did  not  realize  it,  but 
he  had  described  to  her  no  place  that  he  had 
known  but  the  way  to  the  House.  The  girl 
cut  him  off. 

"Don't!"  she  said  sharply.  "You  know," 
she  half  apologized,  "you  kind  of  remind  me  of 
somebody  ...  a  boy  I  knew  up  country. 

It  was  him  that  got  me  here "  She  made 

her  little  admission  quietly,  the  horror  of  it 
long  worn  down  to  daily  habit.  "That  first 
time  I  saw  you,  it  seemed  almost  as  if  it  was 
him  ...  I  ain't  never  blamed  him  — 
much.  He  didn't  mean  to  be  bad,  but  when  the 
trouble  came  he  couldn't  help  none.  ...  I 
guess  real  help  is  about  the  hardest  thing  to  find 
there  is." 

"I  guess  it  is." 

"Oh,  well,  we  gotta  make  the  best  of  it." 
She  glanced  at  Peter  with  her  head  on  one  side 


The  Lovely  Lady  53 

as  she  twiddled  her  fingers  across  the  cloth  to 
the  tune  of  the  orchestra. 

They  went  out  at  last  and  walked  in  the  least 
frequented  streets,  and  Peter  held  her  hand; 
the  warmth  of  it  ran  with  a  pleasant  tingling  in 
his  veins.  He  seemed  to  have  touched  in  her 
palm  the  point  at  which  the  city  came  alive  to 
him.  They  walked  and  walked  and  yet  it 
seemed  that  something  lacked  to  bring  the 
evening  to  a  finish;  it  was  incredible  to  Peter 
that  after  all  his  loneliness  he  should  have  to  let 
her  go. 

"We  could  go  up  to  my  place,"  Ethel  sug 
gested.  "It's  up  here."  He  hadn't  suspected 
that  she  had  been  guiding  him. 

"I  guess  not  to-night."  Peter's  blood  was 
singing  in  his  ears.  In  the  dark  of  the  unfre 
quented  street  he  could  feel  her  young  body 
leaning  toward  his. 

"Say,  you  know  I  ain't  after  the  money 
the  way  some  girls  are;  I  like  you  .  .  . 
honest-  -" 

"I  guess  I'd  better  go  home."  But  they 
went  on  up  the  side  street  a  little  farther. 
"Good-bye,"  he  said,  but  he  did  not  let  her  go. 


54  The  Lovely  Lady 

She  shook  her  hand  free  at  last. 

"Oh,  well,  of  course,  if  you  don't  want 
to.  .  .  ."  He  felt  her  soft  hands  fumbling 
at  his  face;  she  drew  him  down  to  a  kiss.  Sud 
denly  she  sprang  away,  laughing.  "Go,  you 
silly!" 

"Ethel!"  he  cried,  but  he  lost  her  in  the  dark. 
He  should  have  let  her  go  at  that;  he  knew 
he  should.  In  spite  of  her  paying  half,  his 
dinner  had  cost  him  more  than  two  ordinary 
dinners  .  .  .  and  besides.  .  .  .  He 
couldn't  help,  however,  walking  around  by  the 
viaduct  for  several  evenings  the  next  week,  and 
at  last  he  saw  her.  She  was  going  by  without 
speaking,  but  he  got  squarely  in  front  of  her. 

"Ethel!" 

She  pretended  just  to  have  recognized  him. 

"  Oh,  you  here?  I  thought  you'd  gone  back  to 
the  country!" 

"You  aren't  mad  with  me  about  .  .  . 
the  other  night?  "  He  did  not  quite  know  how 
to  express  the  quality  of  his  desertion. 

"Who?  Me?"  airily.  "Oh,  I  guess  there's 

just  as  good  fish  in  the  sea "  She  changed 

all  at  once  under  his  young  hunger  for  com- 


The  Lovely  Lady  55 

panionship.  "  You're  good,"  she  said;  "you're 
the  real  thing." 

"You're  good,  too,"  he  was  certain,  "when 
you're  with  me." 

"Oh,  it  rubs  off.  Say,  kid,  I  guess  you  got 
folks  at  home  you're  sending  money  to  and  all 
that,  and  you  got  to  get  ahead  in  the  world. 
Well,  you  don't  want  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
my  kind,  and  that's  straight."  The  deviltry 
she  put  on  toward  him  failed  pitifully.  "  Chase 
yourself,  kid;  I  just  ain't  good  for  you  any 
more."  Nevertheless  they  moved  along  the 
parapet  to  the  dark  interval  between  the  lights 
and  there  they  kissed  again,  this  time  with 
no  undercurrent. 

"Good-bye,  Ethel." 

"Good-bye,  boy."    The  little  spark  was  out. 


PART  THREE 

IN   WHICH   PETER 
BECOMES  A  BACHELOR 


PART  THREE 

IN   WHICH    PETER    BECOMES   A   BACHELOR 


THE  day  before  leaving  for  his  summer  vaca 
tion  Peter  was  notified  that  he  was  wanted  in 
his  private  office  by  the  younger  Siegel  Brother. 
Though  he  couldn't  quite  fall  in  with  the 
dark  prognostications  of  Blinders  that  he  was 
about  to  be  mulcted  of  his  salary  by  a  plot 
which  had  been  plainly  indicated  by  the  marked 
partiality  of  our  Mr.  Croker,  the  incident  gave 
him  some  uneasiness.  The  young  Siegel  Brother 
must  have  been  younger  than  somebody  of 
course,  though  it  couldn't  have  been  by  more 
than  a  scratch,  and  he  might  have  been  any 
age  without  betraying  it,  so  deeply  was  he  sunk 
in  the  evidence  of  the  surpassing  quality  of  the 
grocery  department.  However,  there  was  some 
thing  surprisingly  young  looking  out  at  Peter 

59 


60  The  Lovely  Lady 

from  the  junior  brother's  red  and  white  rotun 
dity,  at  which  he  took  heart  immensely. 

"Weatheral,  Peter,  canned  goods,  recom 
mended  by  Mr.  Greenslet,"  Siegel  Brother 
ticked  him  off  from  a  manilla  envelope.  "Just 
a  little  honorarium,  Mr.  Weatheral,  we  are  in 
the  habit  of  distributing  to  such  of  our  em 
ployees  as  make  practical  suggestions  to  the 
advantage  of  the  business."  Contriving  to 
make  his  hands  meet  in  front  of  him  by  clasping 
them  very  high  up  on  his  chest,  Siegel  Brother 
assumed  that  he  had  folded  his  arms,  and  waited 
to  see  what  Peter  would  do  about  it. 

"We  have  also  a  little  savings  bank  for  the 
benefit  of  our  employees  which  pays  3  per 
cent.,  yet  I  believe  we  have  you  not  among  our 
depositors."  There  was  the  slightest  possible 
burr  to  his  speech  as  though  it  were  blunted  by 
so  much  fatness. 

"Well,  you  see,  sir  —  there's  a  mortgage." 
Peter  was  afraid  he  should  damage  himself  by 
the  admission,  but  the  firm  heard  him  out. 

"How  much?" 

"It  was  a  thousand,  but  we've  got  it  down  to 
seven  hundred  —  six  hundred  and  sixty," 


The  Lovely  Lady  61 

Peter  corrected  himself  with  a  glance  at  his 
honorarium. 

"And  the  farm,  it  is  worth "  Siegel 

Brother  parted  his  hands  slightly  to  admit  of 
any  valuation. 

"Two  thousand." 

"So!  Well,  Mr.  Weatheral,  that  is  not  so 
bad,  and  if  I  were  you,  when  I  had  occasion  to 
speak  of  it  I  would  say,  not  'I  am  paying  a 
mortgage,5  that  is  dead  work,  Mr.  Weatheral, 
but  *  I  am  buying  a  farm.'  It  goes  easier  so." 

"Thank  you,  sir,  I'll  remember."  He  sup 
posed  his  employer  was  done  with  him,  but 
as  he  turned  to  go  he  heard  his  name  again. 

"You  will  report  to  our  Mr.  Croker  when 
you  return,  Mr.  Weatheral;  he  thinks  he  can 
use  you." 

Two  weeks  later  when  he  came  back  rested 
from  Bloombury,  Peter  found  himself  visible 
to  at  least  ten  persons,  all  of  whom  pertained 
to  the  boarding-house  of  the  exclusive  Mrs. 
Blodgett,  where,  by  the  advice  of  J.  Wilkinson 
Cohn,  he  engaged  a  small  room  on  the  third  floor 
with  a  window  opening  some  six  feet  from  the 
rear  wall  of  a  wholesale  stationery,  and  one 


62  The  Lovely  Lady 

electric  light  discreetly  placed  to  discourage  the 
habit  of  reading  in  bed. 

From  this  time  on  he  was  visible  to  Mrs. 
Blodgett  and  Aggie  and  Miss  Thatcher,  whom 
he  already  knew  as  the  pure  food  demonstrator 
in  dairy  products,  to  two  inconsiderable  young 
women  from  the  wholesale  stationer's,  and  a 
gentleman  from  a  shoe  store,  the  whole  of  whose 
physiognomy  appeared  to  be  occupied  with  the 
effort  to  express  an  engaging  youthf ulness  which 
the  crown  of  his  head  explicitly  denied.  He 
was  occasionally  visible  to  the  representative  of 
gentlemen's  outfitters  who  was  engaged  to  Aggie 
and  took  Sunday  dinners  with  them,  and  he 
was  particularly  and  pleasingly  visible  to  J. 
Wilkinson  Cohn  and  Miss  Minnie  Havens. 
The  rest  of  his  fellow  boarders  were  so  much  of  a 
likeness,  a  kind  of  family  likeness  that  spread 
all  over  Siegel  Brothers  and  such  parts  of  the 
city  as  Peter  had  been  admitted  to,  that  it  was 
a  relief  to  Peter  to  realize  from  his  profile  that 
J.  Wilkinson's  last  name  probably  ought  to  have 
been  spelled  Cohen.  The  determinedly  young 
gentleman  explained  to  him  that  J.  Wilkin 
son's  intrusion  into  the  exclusiveness  of  Blod- 


The  Lovely  Lady  63 

gett's  was  largely  a  concession  to  Aggie's  being 
as  good  as  married  and  not  liable  to  social 
contamination,  and  to  the  fact  that  the  little 
Jew  was  amusing  and  pretty  near  white, 
anyway. 

Miss  Minnie  Havens  did  typewriting  and 
stenography  in  a  downtown  office  and  was 
understood  to  be  in  search  of  economic  indepen 
dence,  rather  than  under  the  necessity  of  mak 
ing  a  living.  She  had  a  high  fluffy  pompadour 
and  a  half  discoverable  smile  which  could  be 
brought  to  a  very  agreeable  laugh  if  one  spent 
a  little  pains  at  it.  J.  Wilkinson  Cohn  ap 
peared  to  find  it  worth  the  pains. 

The  particular  advantage  of  Blodgett's, 
besides  the  fact  that  you  could  have  two  helps 
of  everything  without  paying  extra  for  it,  was 
that  it  was  exclusive  and  social.  Mrs.  Blod- 
gett  had  collected  her  family  of  boarders  on  the 
principle  of  not  having  anybody  who  wasn't  a 
suitable  companion  for  Aggie.  There  was  also 
a  pianola  which  gave  the  place  a  tone. 

There  was  fire  and  light  in  the  dining-room 
at  Blodgett's  from  seven  to  nine  always,  and  in 
the  parlour  with  the  pianola  on  Saturday  even- 


64  The  Lovely  Lady 

ing  and  all  day  Sunday.  Sometimes,  even  on 
week  days  after  supper,  J.  Wilkinson  would 
open  the  door  into  the  darkened  room,  push  away 
the  pianola  and  sing  topical  songs  to  his  own 
accompaniment  until  his  stiffened  fingers  clat 
tered  on  the  keys.  Other  times  he  would  give 
imitations  of  popular  stage  celebrities  until 
Blodgett's  shouted  with  laughter.  At  all  times 
they  appeared  to  have  a  great  many  engage 
ments.  Peter  was  advised  to  join  this  or  that 
organization,  and  to  enter  upon  social  occasions 
that  unfortunately  presented  themselves  in  the 
light  of  occasions  to  spend  money.  Apparently 
there  were  no  dragons  tracking  the  path  of 
Blodgett's  boarders.  Miss  Havens  did  better 
than  any  of  them  for  him.  She  explained  to 
him  how  to  get  books  from  the  circulating 
library,  and  let  him  read  hers  until  he  could 
arrange  for  a  card.  She  said  it  was  a  pleasure 
to  think  there  was  going  to  be  somebody  in  the 
house  who  was  congenial.  It  wasn't  that  she 
had  anything  against  Miss  Thatcher  and  the 
rest  of  them  —  they  just  didn't  have  the  same 
tastes.  She  thought  a  person  ought  to  spend 
some  of  the  time  improving  their  minds. 


The  Lovely  Lady  65 

Although  the  expression  was  ambiguous,  it 
served  as  a  sort  of  sedative  to  the  aching  vac 
uity  of  the  hours  which  Peter  spent  away 
from  Siegel  Brothers.  He  found  himself  spend 
ing  as  many  as  possible  of  them  with  Miss 
Havens.  She  had  a  way  of  making  the  frivol 
ling  talk  of  the  supper  table  appear  a  warrant 
able  substitute  for  the  things  that  Peter  knew, 
even  while  he  echoed  her  phrases,  that  he 
wasn't  getting.  He  found  himself  skidding  on 
the  paths  of  self -improvement  and  the  obliga 
tions  of  seeing  life,  along  the  edges  of  desolation. 
He  immersed  himself  as  far  as  possible  in  the 
atmosphere  of  Blodgett's  in  order  that  he 
needn't  have  any  time  left  in  which  to  consider 
how  far  it  fell  short  of  what  he  had  come  to  find. 
For  this  reason  he  was  usually  the  last  at  the 
supper  table,  but  there  were  occasions  when  he 
found  it  discreet  to  slip  away  as  early  and 
quietly  as  possible. 

It  was  one  evening  about  two  months  after 
his  instalment  at  Blodgett's.  Peter  was  sit 
ting  in  his  room  when  he  heard  them  yam 
mering  at  his  door  with  so  much  hilarious 
insistence  that  he  found  himself  getting  up  to 


66  The  Lovely  Lady 

open  it,  without  giving  himself  time  to  put 
down  the  book  he  was  reading  or  to  take  off 
the  overcoat  he  had  put  on  for  want  of  a  fire, 
and  finding  himself  in  some  embarrassment 
because  of  the  misapprehension  which  this  fact 
involved. 

"Ready,  Peter?" 

"Come  along,  Peter!" 

"I     .     .     .     I'm  not  going,"  said  Peter. 

"What?  Not  going  to  the  rink  with  us  to 
night?  Why,  you  said "  The  bright  group 

of  his  fellow  boarders  hung  upon  the  narrow 
landing  like  bees  at  the  threshold  of  a  hive. 

"I  said  I'd  go  if  I  could—"  protested  Peter, 
"and  I  can't." 

" Gee !     What's  the  matter  with  you? " 

"Don't  be  a  beastly  stiff!" 

"Come  on,  fellows,  we'll  miss  the  car.  Let 
him  be  a  stiff  if  he  wants  to." 

Peter  heard  their  feet  retreating  on  the  stairs ^ 
and  then  he  saw  that  Minnie  Havens  still  hesi 
tated  at  the  landing.  She  had  on  her  best  silk 
waist  and  her  blond  pompadour  was  brushed 
higher  than  ever.  Her  eyes,  which  were  blue, 
were  fixed  directly  on  him  with  something  in 


The  Lovely  Lady  67 

the  meeting  that  gave  him  the  impression, 
gaspingly,  of  being  about  to  step  off  into  space. 
He  seemed  suddenly  to  see  a  path  opening 
directly  through  the  skating  rink  and  the  Satur 
day  Social  Club  to  the  House  of  the  Shining 
Walls,  and  Minnie  Havens  walking  in  it  beside 
him.  He  wrenched  his  mind  away  forcibly 
from  that  and  fixed  it  on  the  figure  of  his 
weekly  salary. 

"Couldn't  you?"  she  persuaded. 

"No,"  said  Peter.  "I'm  much  obliged  to 
you,  but  I  really  couldn't." 

But  before  he  had  time  to  take  up  his  read 
ing,  which  somehow  he  was  not  able  to  do  im 
mediately,  he  heard  Mrs.  Blodgett,  who  made 
a  point  of  being  as  kind  to  her  boarders  as  she 
could  afford  to  be,  tapping  at  his  door. 

"I  thought  you'd  be  going  to  the  rink  to 
night." 

"No,"  said  Peter. 

"You  don't  think  it's  wrong,  or  anything?" 

"Oh,  no,  not  in  the  least/' 

"Well,  Mr.  Weatheral,  I've  seen  a  power  of 
young  folks,  comin'  and  goin',  in  my  business 
and  it  don't  pay  for  'em  to  get  too  stodgy  like. 


68  The  Lovely  Lady 

They  need  livenin'  up."  She  hung  upon  the 
door  as  Peter  waited  for  her  to  go.  "Miss 
Havens  is  a  nice  girl,"  she  ventured. 

Peter  admitted  it.  "I've  my  mother  and 
sister  to  think  of,"  he  told  her,  and  presently 
he  found  he  had  told  her  a  great  deal  more. 

"Well,"  commented  Mrs.  Blodgett,  "you 
do  have  a  lot  to  carry.  .  .  .  Was  you 
readin'  now,  Mr.  Weatheral?  .  .  .  because 
it's  warmer  down  in  my  sittin*  room,  and 
there's  only  Aggie  and  me  sewin'.  .  .  . 
Besides,"  she  argued  triumphantly,  "it's 
savin'  light." 

First  and  last  he  heard  a  great  deal  about 
saving  at  Blodgett 's.  Aggie,  who  was  making 
up  her  white  things,  had  something  to  tell 
every  evening  almost,  about  the  price  of  inser 
tion.  But  it  was  saving  for  a  purpose;  they 
were  in  the  way,  most  of  them,  of  being  inves 
tors.  J.  Wilkinson  had  sixty  dollars  in  his 
brother's  cigar  stand  on  Fifty-fourth  street. 
He  used  to  let  his  brother  off  for  Sunday  after 
noons  with  quite  a  proprietary  air.  The  shoe 
gentleman,  whose  very  juvenile  name  was  Wally 
Whitaker,  didn't  believe  in  such  a  mincing  at 


The  Lovely  Lady  69 

prosperity.  He  talked  freely  about  tips  and 
corners  and  margins  and  had  been  known  to 
make  twenty-seven  dollars  in  copper  once. 
He  offered  Peter  some  exclusive  inside  infor 
mation  in  B  and  C's  before  he  had  been  in  the 
house  a  month. 

"Well,  you  see,"  Peter  explained  himself, 
"I'm  buying  a  farm  up  our  way!"  His  fellow 
boarders  laid  down  their  forks  to  look  at  him; 
he  could  see  reflected  from  their  several  angles 
how  he  had  placed  himself  by  the  mere  statement 
of  his  situation.  He  felt  at  once  the  resistance 
it  gave  him,  the  sense  of  something  to  pull 
against,  of  having  got  his  feet  under  him.  It 
was  the  point  at  which  the  conquest  of  the 
mortgage  dragon  began  to  present  itself  to  him 
as  a  thing  accomplished  rather  than  a  thing 
escaped. 

It  must  have  been  this  feeling  of  release 
which  opened  up  for  him,  from  pictures  that 
he  saw  occasionally  with  Miss  Havens  on  Sun 
days,  from  books  he  read  and  discussed  with 
her,  avenues  that  appeared  to  lead  more  or  less 
directly  to  the  House.  There  were  times  when 
he  found  himself  walking  in  them  with  Miss 


70  The  Lovely  Lady 

Minnie  Havens,  and  yet  always  curiously 
expecting  the  Lovely  Lady  when  they  found 
her  there,  to  be  quite  another  person.  He  came 
within  an  inch  of  telling  her  about  it  on  the 
occasion  on  which  she  presented  him  with  an 
embroidered  hat  marker  for  Christmas,  and 
when  he  took  her  to  the  theatre  with  tickets 
the  floor  walker  had  presented  to  him  on  ac 
count  of  Mrs.  Floor  Walker  not  feeling  up  to 
it.  It  appeared,  further,  that  Miss  Havens 
had  a  way  of  falling  into  profound  psychological 
difficulties  which  required  a  vast  amount  of 
talking  over,  and  a  great  many  appeals  to 
Peter's  disinterested  judgment  to  extract  her, 
not  without  some  subtle  intimations  of  dizzying 
escapes  for  himself.  Peter  supposed  that  was 
always  the  way  with  girls.  It  came  to  a  crisis 
later  where  Miss  Havens'  whole  destiny  hung 
upon  the  point  as  to  whether  she  could  accept 
a  situation  offered  her  in  her  own  town,  or 
should  stay  on  in  the  city  and  see  what  came 
of  it. 

"You'd  get  more  salary  there,  and  be  able 
to  live  cheaper?"  Peter  wished  to  know. 

"Oh,  yes."     The  implication  of  her  tone  was 


The  Lovely  Lady  71 

that  she  didn't  see  what  that  had  to  do  with  it. 
It  was  toward  the  end  of  June,  and  she  was 
looking  very  pretty  in  a  white  dress  and  a  hat 
that  set  off  her  pompadour  to  advantage,  and 
there  was  no  special  reason,  as  they  had  the 
afternoon  before  them,  why  they  should  not 
have  taken  some  of  the  by-paths  that  the  girl 
perceived  to  lead  out  from  the  subject  into 
breathless  wonder.  She  had  ways,  which  were 
maidenly  and  good,  of  opening  up  to  Peter 
comfortable  little  garden  plots  of  existence 
which,  though  they  lay  far  this  side  of  the  House 
and  the  Lovely  Lady,  had  in  the  monotony  of 
the  long  climb  up  the  scale  of  Siegel  Brothers, 
moments  of  importunate  invitation. 

"And  you  came  up  to  the  city,"  Peter  went 
on  in  the  gravelled  walk  of  fact,  "just  to  im 
prove  yourself  in  shorthand  so  you  could  get 
such  a  situation?  I  don't  see  why  you  hesitate.5' 

Miss  Havens  could  hardly  say  why  herself. 

"There  were  so  many  ways  of  bettering  one's 
self  in  the  city.  I've  a  great  many  friends 
here,"  she  hinted. 

"Not  so  many,"  Peter  reminded  her,  "as 
you'd  have  where  you  were  brought  up." 


72  The  Lovely  Lady 

"You  are  staying  in  the  city?"  Miss  Havens 
suggested. 

"That's  different.  I  have  to."  He  had  al 
ready  told  her  about  Ellen  and  also  about  his 
mother. 

"And  are  you  always  going  to  stay  on  here 
like  this,  working  and  working  and  never  taking 
any  time  for  yourself?  Aren't  you  ever  going 
to  ...  marry?" 

"I  know  too  much  what  poverty  is  like  to 
ask  any  woman  to  share  it,"  Peter  protested. 

"Suppose  she  should  ask  you?" 

"They  don't  do  that;  the  right  sort." 

"I  don't  see  why  .  .  .  if  some  girl 
.  .  .  cared  .  .  .  and  if  she  saw  .  . 
anybody  struggling  along  under  burdens  she 
would  be  glad  to  share,  and  she  knew  because 
of  that  he  didn't  mean  to  ask  her  .  .  . 
You  think  she  ought  not  to  let  him  know?" 

"I  think  it  wouldn't  be  best,"  said  Peter. 

"You  think  the  man  would  despise  her?" 

"Not  that;  but  if  he  liked  her  a  little  .  .  . 
he  might  consent  to  it  ...  just  because 
he  liked  her  and  was  tired  maybe  .  .  .  and 
that  wouldn't  be  good  for  either  of  them." 


The  Lovely  Lady  78 

"Well,  anyway,  it  doesn't  concern  either  of 
us,"  said  Miss  Havens. 

The  next  evening  as  Peter  was  letting  him 
self  in  at  his  own  door  —  he  had  moved  to  the 
second  floor  front  by  this  time  — Mrs.  Blodgett 
stopped  him. 

"Miss  Havens  left  her  regards  for  you,"  she 
explained.  "She  went  to-day." 

"Oh,"  said  Peter,  "wasn't  it  sudden?" 

"Sort  of.  She'd  been  considerin'  of  it  for 
some  time,  and  last  night  she  made  up  her 
mind.  But  I  did  think,"  said  Mrs.  Blodgett, 
"that  she'd  have  said  good-bye  to  you."  And 
not  eliciting  anything  by  way  of  a  reply,  she 
added:  "Miss  Havens  is  a  nice  girl.  I  hate  to 
think  of  her  slavin'  her  life  out  in  an  office. 
She'd  ought  to  get  married." 

"A  girl  has  ever  so  many  more  chances  in  her 
home  town,"  Peter  offered  hopefully. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so."  Mrs.  Blodgett  sighed. 
"Is  there  anything  I  can  do  for  you,  Mr. 
Weatheral?" 

"Nothing,  thank  you."  He  was  lingering 
still  on  the  landing  on  Mrs.  Blodgett's  account, 
but  he  found  his  finger  slipping  between  the 


74  The  Lovely  Lady 

leaves  of  the  volume  he  had  brought  from  the 
library. 

"Ah,"  she  warned  him,  "readin*  is  an 
improvin'  occupation,  but  there's  a  book  we 
hadn't  any  of  us  ought  to  miss,  and  that's  the 
Book  of  Life,  Mr.  Weatheral."  And  somehow 
with  that  ringing  in  his  ears,  Peter  spent  sev 
eral  minutes  walking  up  and  down  in  his  room 
before  he  could  settle  to  his  book  again. 

II 

It  was  a  week  or  ten  days  after  Miss  Havens 
left,  before  Peter  went  down  to  Bloombury 
for  his  midsummer  vacation,  a  week  in  which 
he  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  getting  back 
to  the  House  of  the  Shining  Walls.  He  set 
out  for  it  almost  immediately  with  a  feeling 
akin  to  the  release  with  which  one  returns 
to  daily  habit  after  the  departure  of  an  unex 
pected  guest.  But  his  thought  would  no 
sooner  strike  into  the  accustomed  paths  than 
Miss  Minnie  Havens  would  meet  him  there  un 
accountably,  to  begin  again  those  long  intimate 
conversations  which  led  toward  and  about  the 


The  Lovely  Lady  75 

House,  but  never  quite  to  it.  Peter  found 
himself  looking  out  for  those  meetings  with 
some  notion  of  dodging  them,  and  yet  once 
they  were  fairly  off,  he  owned  them  a  great 
relief  from  Blodgett's.  Now  that  it  was  with 
drawn,  he  realized  in  the  girl's  bright  com 
panionship  the  effect  of  the  rose-red  glow  of 
the  shade  that  Aggie  drew  down  over  the  front 
parlour  lamp  on  the  evenings  when  the  Gentle 
men's  Outfitter  called.  It  had  prevented  his 
seeing  until  now,  that  the  chief  difference  be 
tween  himself  and  his  fellow  boarders,  was 
that  for  most  of  them,  this  was  a  place  where 
they  had  come  to  stay.  Having  let  Miss 
Havens  go  on  alone  to  the  place  she  was 
bound  for,  he  had  moments  of  dreadful  sinking, 
as  it  occurred  to  him  to  wonder  if  he  hadn't 
made  a  mistake  in  the  nature  of  his  own  des 
tination.  Suppose,  after  all,  he  should  find 
himself  castaway  in  some  oasis  of  determined 
sprightliness  with  Wally  Whitaker  in  whose 
pocket  pretenses  of  tips  and  margins  he  began 
to  discern  a  poorer  sort  of  substitute  for  the 
House.  He  was  as  much  bored  by  the  per 
manently  young  shoe-salesman  after  this  dis- 


76  The  Lovely  Lady 

covery  as  before  it,  but  obliged  to  set  a  watch 
on  himself  lest  in  a  moment  of  finding  himself 
too  much  in  the  same  case,  he  should  make  the 
mistake  of  inviting  Wally  to  Bloombury  for 
his  vacation. 

He  was  relieved,  when  at  last  he  had  got 
away  without  it,  to  be  saved  from  such  a 
misadventure,  for  he  found  his  mother  not 
standing  the  heat  well,  and  Ellen  anxious. 
He  had  never  definitely  shaped  to  himself  the 
idea  that  there  could  anything  happen  to  his 
mother;  she  was  as  much  a  part  of  his  life  as 
the  aging  apple  trees  and  the  hills  that  climbed, 
with  low,  gnarled  pines  to  the  sky's  edge  be 
yond  the  marshes,  a  point  from  which  to  take 
distance  and  direction.  He  began  to  note 
now  the  graying  hair,  the  shrunken  breast 
and  the  worn  hands,  so  blue  veined  for  all 
their  brownness,  and  he  could  not  sleep  of  nights 
because  of  the  sweat  that  was  on  his  soul,  for 
fear  of  what  might  come  to  her.  He  would 
lie  in  the  little  room  under  the  roof  and  hear 
the  elms  moving  like  the  riffle  of  silence  into 
sound,  thinking  of  his  mother  until  at  last 
he  would  be  obliged  to  rise  and  move  softly 


The  Lovely  Lady  77 

about  the  place,  as  if  by  the  mere  assertion 
of  himself  he  could  make  her  safer  in  it.  He 
wished  nothing  so  much  as  not  to  disturb  her, 
but  she  must  have  been  lying  awake  often 
herself,  for  the  second  or  third  time  this  hap 
pened,  she  called  to  him.  He  came,  half 
dressed  as  he  was  and  drew  the  covers  up  close 
about  her  shoulders,  and  was  exceedingly  gay 
and  tender  with  her. 

"There's  nothing  troubling  you,  son?" 

"Nothing  —  except  to  be  sure  there's  noth 
ing  troubling  you." 

She  gave  a  little,  low  laugh  like  a  girl. 

"That's  so  like  your  father.  I  remember 
he  would  get  up  in  the  night  when  you  were 
little,  and  go  prowling  about  ...  he 
used  to  say  he  was  afraid  the  roof  tree 
would  fall  in  and  kill  you.  And  yet  here  you 
are  .  .  .  She  reached  out  to  give  him 

a  little  pat,  as  if  somehow  to  reassure  him. 
The  low  dropping  moon  made  a  square  block 
of  light  on  the  uncarpeted  floor;  outside,  the 
orchard  waited  for  the  dawn,  and  the  fields 
brimmed  life  up  to  their  very  doors. 

"You're  like  him  in  other  ways,"   she  went 


78  The  Lovely  Lady 

on.  "Somehow  it's  brought  him  back  wonder 
fully  the  last  two  or  three  days,  and  especially 
at  night  when  I'd  hear  you  creaking  down  the 
stair.  There's  a  board  there  which  always 
does  creak,  and  I'd  hear  you  trying  to  remem 
ber  which  it  was,  the  same  as  he  used  to " 

"I  haven't  meant  to  keep  you  awake, 
mother.'9 

"I've  been  awake.  When  you're  getting 
along  like,  you  don't  sleep  much,  Peter.  Sleep 
is  for  dreaming,  some  of  it,  and  the  old  don't 
dream." 

"You're  not  to  go  calling  yourself  old, 
mother!" 

"And  me  with  a  son  going  twenty-three ! 
We  weren't  so  young  either  when  we  were 
married,  your  father  and  I  ...  but 
I  want  you  should  sleep,  Peter,  and  dream 
when  you  can.  You  have  pleasant  dreams,  son?  " 

"Any  amount  of  them."  He  was  going  off 
into  one  of  those  bright  fantasies  of  what  he 
should  do  when  he  was  rich  as  he  meant  to  be, 
with  which  he  had  so  often  beguiled  Ellen's 
pain,  but  she  kissed  him  and  sent  him  to  bed 
again  lest  Ellen  should  hear  them. 


The  Lovely  Lady  79 

It  was  not  more  than  a  day  or  two  after 
that  the  minister's  wife  caught  young  Mr. 
Weatheral  walking  with  his  mother  in  the 
back  pasture  with  his  arm  about  her,  and  was 
slightly  shocked  by  it,  for  though  it  was  thought 
highly  commendable  in  him  to  have  paid  off 
the  mortgage  and  managed  a  silk  dress  for 
her  and  Ellen  besides,  Bloombury  was  not 
habituated  to  a  lively  expression  of  family  af 
fection.  Peter  had  consented  to  gather  the 
huckleberries  which  Ellen  insisted  were  of  a 
superior  flavour  in  the  back  pasture,  on  the  sole 
condition  that  his  mother  should  come  with 
him,  and  the  minister's  wife  had  just  stepped 
aside  on  her  way  to  the  Tillinghurst's  to  gather 
the  southerwood  which  grew  there,  for  the 
minister's  winter  cough,  when  she  caught  sight 
of  them. 

"She  couldn't  have  stared  more'  if  she'd 
caught  me  with  a  girl."  Peter  protested. 

"It's  only  that  she'd  have  thought  it  more 
likely,"  his  mother  extenuated.  "I  hope  you 
aren't  going  to  be  a  girl-hater,  Peter.  I  want 
you  should  marry  some  time,  and  if  I  haven't 
seemed  anxious  about  it  before  now,  you 


80  The  Lovely  Lady 

mustn't  think  it's  because  I  want  to  keep  you 
for  Ellen  and  me.  What  I  don't  want  is  that 
you  should  take  to  it  just  because  there's  a  girl. 
Not  but  what  that's  natural,  but  there's  more 
to  it  than  that,  Peter.  For  you,  "  she  supple 
mented.  She  sat  down  on  a  gray,  round  stone 
while  Peter  stripped  the  bushes  at  her  feet, 
and  watched  to  see  if  his  colour  rose  while  she 
talked,  or  his  gaze  failed  to  meet  hers  at  any 
point. 

"I'd  have  liked  to  have  Ellen  marry,"  said 
Ellen's  mother,  "she's  that  kind.  Having  a 
man  of  her  own,  most  any  kind  of  a  man  so 
as  he  would  be  good  to  her,  would  mean  such 
a  lot.  If  Ellen  can  have  a  little  of  what 
everybody's  having,  she's  satisfied.  But  there 
are  some  who  can  get  a  great  deal  more  out  of 
it  than  that  .  .  .  and  if  they  don't  the 
rest  of  it  is  a  drag  and  a  weariness."  He 
left  off  stripping  the  bushes  and  turned  con 
tentedly  against  her  knees. 

"You're  my  home,  Mumsey." 

"And  not  even,"  she  gently  insisted,  "when 
I'm  not  here  to  make  it  for  you.  There's  a 
kind  of  life  goes  with  loving;  it's  like  —  like 


The  Lovely  Lady  81 

the  lovely  inside  colour  of  a  shell,  and  somehow, 
this  winter  I've  wondered  if  you'd  got  to  the 
place  where  you  knew  what  that  would  be 
like  if  you  should  find  it."  She  turned  his 
face  up  to  her  with  a  tender  anxiety  and  yet 
with  a  little  timidity;  they  did  not  talk  much 
of  such  things  in  Bloombury. 

"I  know,  mother." 

"Yes  .  .  .  "  after  a  long  look,  "you 
would ;  you  're  so  like  your  father.  But  if  you 
know,  you  mustn't  ever  be  led  by  dullness  or 
loneliness  into  anything  less,  Peter.  Not  that 
I'm  afraid  you'll  be  led  into  anything  wrong 
but  there  are  things  that  are  al 
most  more  wrong  than  downright  wicked 
ness.  .  .  . 

"I've  been  thinking  a  great  deal  lately  about 
when  I  was  your  age,  and  there  didn't  seem 
anything  for  me  but  to  marry  one  of  the  neigh 
bour's  boys  that  I'd  known  always,  or  a  long 
plain  piece  of  school  teaching.  It  wasn't  easy 
with  everybody  egging  me  on  • —  but  I  stuck 
it  out,  and  at  the  last  along  came  your 
father  ...  I'd  like  you  to  have  some 
thing  like  that,  Peter,  —  and  your  son  com- 


82  The  Lovely  Lady 

ing  to  you  the  way  you  came  to  me,  like  it 
was  through  a  cloud  of  glory  .  .  .  He 

looked  up  presently  on  her  silence,  silver  tipped 
now  with  the  hope  of  renewal,  and  he  saw 
her  as  a  man  sometimes  when  he  is  young  and 
clean,  sees  his  mother,  the  Sacred  Door  .  .  . 
and  he  did  not  observe  at  all  that  her  hands 
were  berry  stained  and  the  nails  broken,  nor 
that  her  cheek  had  fallen  in  and  her  hair  gray 
and  wispy.  But  being  a  young  man  and 
never  good  at  talking,  it  made  no  difference 
with  him  except  that  as  they  walked  home 
across  the  pastures  he  was  more  than  ever 
careful  of  her  and  teased  her  more  whimsi 
cally. 

He  forgot,  after  he  had  settled  in  his  room 
again  at  Blodgett's,  that  Miss  Minnie  Havens 
had  ever  walked  with  him  in  the  purlieus  of 
the  House,  for  he  was  quite  taken  up  with  a 
new  set  of  rooms  he  had  thrown  out  from  it 
for  his  mother.  She  was  always  there  with 
him  now  until  the  day  of  her  death  and  long 
after,  made  a  part  of  all  his  dreaming  by  the 
touch  with  which  she  had  limned  in  herself 
for  him,  the  feature  of  all  Lovely  Ladies. 


The  Lovely  Lady  83 

He  would  write  her  long  letters  into  which 
crept  much  that  had  been  uttered  only  in  the 
House,  which  that  winter  became  an  estate 
in  Florida,  moved  there  because  of  Mrs. 
Weatheral's  need  of  mild  climate.  They  went 
abroad  after  the  Christmas  Holidays  in  which 
she  had  coughed  more  than  usual  and  con 
sented  to  have  her  breakfast  brought  up  to  bed, 
setting  out  every  evening  from  Peter 's  reading- 
lamp  and  arriving  very  shortly  at  Italian  Cathe 
drals  and  old  Roman  seaport  towns  that 
smelled  of  history. 

Dreaming  of  lovely  ladies  who  have  no  face 
or  form  other  than  they  borrow  from  the  pass 
ing  incident  is  a  very  pleasant  way  of  passing 
the  time,  and  does  not  necessarily  lead  to  any 
thing;  but  when  a  man  goes  about  afraid  lest 
his  mother  should  die  for  lack  of  something  he 
might  have  got  for  her,  he  dreams  closer  at 
home.  More  than  ever  since  the  revelation 
of  his  mother's  frailness,  Peter  dreamed  of 
being  rich,  and  since  there  was  nothing  nearer 
to  him  than  the  way  Siegel  Brothers  had  man 
aged  it,  he  devoted  so  much  time  to  the  scru 
tiny  of  their  methods  that  he  passed  in  a  very 


84  The  Lovely  Lady 

short  time  from  being  head  of  the  delivery  de 
partment  to  the  right  hand  of  Mr.  Croker. 
Even  Blinders  could  not  recall,  in  the  three 
years  he  had  been  bundle  boy,  so  marked  an 
example  of  favouritism. 

"They  don't  make  partners  any  more  out 
of  underlings,"  Croker  let  him  know  confiden 
tially.  "What  do  you  think  you're  headed 
for?"  Peter  explained  himself. 

"I  wanted  to  find  out  how  they  did  it." 

"And  when  you  find  out,"  Croker  wagged 
at  him,  "you  won't  be  able  to  do  anything  with 
it.  You  have  to  have  capital.  Look  at  the 
time  I've  been  with  them!" 

"How  long  is  that?"     Peter  was  interested. 

"Twenty  years."     Croker  told  him. 

"In  twenty  years,"  Peter  was  confident, 
"a  man  ought  to  be  able  to  find  some  capi 
tal."  After  that  he  began  to  observe  Mr. 
Croker. 

It  ris  probable  at  this  time  that  if  he  had 
not  been  concerned  for  his  mother's  health, 
he  might  have  grown  as  dry  and  uninteresting 
as  at  Blodgett's  they  began  to  think  him. 

He  was  a  thin  young  man  with  hair  of  no 


The  Lovely  Lady  85 

particular  colour,  and  eyes  that  were  good  and 
rather  shy  about  women.  He  went  out  very 
little  and  had  not,  Miss  Thatcher  who  sat 
opposite  him  was  sure,  a  mind  above  his  busi 
ness.  Aggie  had  married  her  Outfitter,  and 
J.  Wilkinson  Cohn,  who  had  become  a  full 
partner  in  his  brother's  cigar  stand,  had  moved 
out  to  Fifty- fourth  Street,  so  that  there  was 
nobody  who  could  have  contradicted  her. 
But  lying  awake  planning  how  he  might  piece 
out  life  for  his  mother  with  comforts,  and  hear 
ing  in  every  knock  the  precursor  of  what  might 
have  happened  to  her,  his  heart  was  exercised 
as  it  is  good  for  the  heart  to  be  even  with  pain 
and  anxiety.  And  beyond  the  heart  stretching 
there  was  always  the  House.  He  could  seldom 
get  away  to  it  in  his  waking  hours,  but  he 
knew  it  was  there  for  him,  and  visiting  it  in 
dreams  he  kept  in  spite  of  the  anxiety  and  Mr. 
Croker,  his  young  resiliency.  Along  in  De 
cember,  about  two  weeks  before  his  midwinter 
holiday,  Ellen  sent  for  him. 

"It's  not  as  if  there  hadn't  been  time  for 
everything.  You  must  think  of  that,  Peter. 
And  your  being  able  to  come  down  every 


86  The  Lovely  Lady 

Saturday  since  the  first  stroke.  There's  plenty 
that  are  hurried  away  without  a  good-bye  or 
anything." 

"I  know,  Ellen." 

*'  And  it  isn't  as  if  there  hadn't  been  plenty  to 
say,  either.  Six  weeks  would  have  been  too 
long  for  anybody  less  loving  than  mother. 
They  wouldn't  have  known  how  to  go  through 
your  life  and  say  just  the  things  you'll  be  glad  to 
remember  when  the  time  comes  for  them. 
You've  got  to  keep  your  mind  on  those  things, 
Peter." 

"Yes,  Ellen." 

The  front  room  had  been  well  rid  up  after 
the  funeral  and  everybody  at  Ellen's  earnest 
entreaty  had  left  them  quite  alone.  Although 
there  was  fire  in  the  base  burner,  they  were  sit 
ting  together  by  the  kitchen  stove,  the  front 
of  which  was  thrown  open  for  the  sake  of  the 
warm  glow  of  the  coals.  By  and  by  the  kettle 
began  to  sing  and  the  bare  tips  of  the  lilac 
scratched  on  the  pane  like  a  live  thing  waiting 
to  be  let  in.  The  little  familiar  sounds  refilled 
for  them  the  empty  room. 

Outside  it  was  every  way  such  a  day  as  a 


The  Lovely  Lady  87 

well-spent  life  might  slip  away  in;  the  tracks 
in  the  deep-rutted  February  snow  might  have 
been  worn  there  by  the  habit  of  sixty  years. 
There  was  no  hint  of  the  spring  yet,  but  here 
and  there  in  the  bare  patches  on  the  hills  and 
the  frayed  icy  edges  of  the  drifts,  the  sign  that 
the  weight  of  the  winter  was  behind  them. 
There  would  be  a  little  quiet  time  yet  and  then 
the  resurrection.  The  brother  and  sister  had 
taken  it  all  very  quietly.  Nobody  had  ever 
taken  anything  in  any  other  way  in  the  presence 
of  Mrs.  Weatheral,  and  that  she  was  there  still 
for  them,  that  she  would  always  be  present  in 
their  lives,  a  warm  determining  influence,  was 
witnessed  by  that  absence  of  violence  which 
empties  too  soon  the  cup  of  grief.  The  loss 
of  their  mother  had  at  least  brought  them  no 
sense  of  leaving  her  behind.  They  were  going 
on  with  their  life  so  soon  because  she  was  going 
with  them. 

"That  was  why  I  wanted  them  all  to  go 
away,"  Ellen  took  up  the  thought  again. 
"I've  been  thinking  all  day  about  mother  being 
with  father  and  how  glad  he'll  be  to  see  her, 
and  yet  it  seems  as  if  I  can  feel  her  here.  I 


88  The  Lovely  Lady 

thought  if  we  kept  still  a  while  she'd  make  us 
understand  what  she  wanted  us  to  do." 

"About  what,  Ellen?" 

"About  my  going  up  to  the  city  with  you  to 
board  —  it  seemes  such  a  wasteful  way  to  live 
somehow,  just  sitting  around!" 

"It  isn't  as  expensive  as  keeping  house," 
Peter  told  her,  "and  I  want  you  to  sit  around, 
Ellen;  women  in  Bloombury  don't  get  enough  of 
that  I'm  afraid." 

"They  don't.  Did  you  see  Ada  Harvey 
to-day?  Four  children  and  two  teeth  out,  and 
her  not  thirty.  I  guess  you'd  take  better  care 
of  me  than  that,  Peter, — only  - 

"You  think  she  wouldn't  like  it  for  you?" 

"She  thought  such  a  lot  of  keeping  up  a 
home,  Peter.  It  was  like  —  like  those  Catho 
lics  burning  candles.  It  seemed  as  if  she 
thought  you'd  get  something  out  of  it  if  it  was 
just  going  on,  even  if  you  didn't  visit  it  more 
than  two  or  three  times  a  year.  Lots  of  women 
feel  that  way,  Peter,  and  I  guess  there  must 
be  something  in  it." 

"There  is  something  in  it,"  Peter  assured  her. 

"And  if  I  go  and  board  with  you  we'd  have 


The  Lovely  Lady  89 

to  break  up  everything '  She  looked 

about  on  all  the  familiar  mould  of  daily  habit 
that  was  her  world,  and  tears  started  afresh. 
"And  we've  got  all  this  furniture."  She  moved 
her  head  toward  the  door  of  the  front  room  and 
the  parlour  set  that  had  been  Peter's  Christmas 
gift  to  them  two  years  ago.  "For  all  it  was 
such  a  comfort  to  her  to  have  it,  it's  as  good 
as  new.  It  seemed  as  if  she  thought  you  were 
the  only  one  good  enough  to  sit  in  it." 

"Don't,  Ellen." 

"I  know,  Peter."  They  were  silent  a  while 
until  the  deep  wells  of  grief  had  stilled  in  the 
sense  of  that  sustaining  presence.  "I  only 
wanted  to  be  sure  I  wouldn't  be  going  against 
her,  breaking  up  the  home.  It  seems  like  any 
thing  she  set  such  store  by  oughtn't  to  stop  just 
because  she  isn't  here  to  take  care  of  it." 
They  had  to  come  back  to  that  the  next  day 
and  the  next. 

"I  only  want  to  do  what  is  best  for  you, 
Ellen." 

"I'd  be  best  off  if  I  was  making  you  happy, 
Peter  —  and  I'd  feel  such  a  burden  somehow, 
just  boarding." 


90  The  Lovely  Lady 

"The  rents  are  cheaper  in  the  suburbs,"  Peter 
went  so  far  as  to  admit.  It  was  all  so  inarticu 
late  in  him;  how  could  he  explain  to  Ellen  the 
feeling  that  he  had,  that  settling  down  to  a 
home  with  her  would  somehow  put  an  end  to 
any  dreams  he  had  had  of  a  home  of  his  own, 
persistent  but  unshaped  visions  that  vanished 
before  the  sudden  brightening  of  Ellen's  face 
at  his  least  concession. 

"We  could  have  somebody  in  to  clean,"  she 
reminded  him,  "and  I  hardly  ever  have  to  be 
in  bed  now." 

The  fact  was  that  Peter  had  the  very  place  in 
mind;  he  had  often  walked  out  there  on  Sundays 
from  Blodgett's;  he  thought  the  neighbourhood 
had  a  clean  and  healthy  look.  He  went  up  on 
Tuesday  to  see  what  could  be  done  about  it. 

Lessing,  who  rented  him  the  apartment,  made 
the  natural  mistake  about  it  that  Peter's  age 
and  his  inexperience  as  a  householder  invited. 
He  said  the  neighbours  were  all  a  most  desirable 
class  of  people,  and  Peter  could  see  for  himself 
that  the  city  was  bound  to  build  out  that  way 
in  a  few  years.  As  for  what  Pleasanton  could 
do  in  the  way  of  climate,  well,  Lessing  told  him, 


The  Lovely  Lady  91 

with  the  air  of  being  only  a  little  less  interested 
than  he  credited  Peter  with  being,  look  at  the 
perambulators. 

They  were  as  fine  a  lot  of  wellfilled  vehicles  as 
could  be  produced  by  any  suburb  anywhere,  and 
Ellen  for  one  was  never  tired  of  looking  at  them. 
But  Peter  couldn't  understand  why  Ellen  in 
sisted  on  walking  home  from  church  Sunday 
morning  the  wrong  way  of  the  pavement. 

"I  suppose  we  do  get  in  the  way,"  she  ad 
mitted  after  he  had  explained  to  her  that  they 
wouldn't  be  crowded  off  so  frequently  if  they 
moved  with  the  nurse-maid's  parade  and  not 
against  it,  "  but  if  we  go  this  way  we  can  see  all 
the  little  faces." 

"I  didn't  know  you  cared  so  much  for  babies." 

"Well,  you  see  it  isn't  as  if  I  was  to  have  any 

of  my  own "  Something  in  the  tone  with 

which  she  admitted  the  restraining  fact  of  her 
affliction  brought  out  for  Peter  how  she  had 
fitted  her  life  to  it,  like  a  plant  growing  hardily 
out  of  a  rock,  climbing  over  and  around  it  with 
out  rancour  or  rebellion.  As  he  turned  now  to 
look  at  her  long,  plain  face  in  the  light  of  what 
had  been  going  on  in  himself  lately,  he  recalled 


92  The  Lovely  Lady 

that  the  determining  influence  which  had  drawn 
her  thick  hair  into  that  unbecoming  knot  at 
the  back  of  her  neck  had  been  the  pain  it  had 
given  her  when  she  first  began  to  put  up  her  hair, 
to  do  it  higher. 

She  was  watching  the  bright  little  bonneted 
heads  go  by  with  the  same  detachment  that 
he  had  learned  to  look  at  the  shop  windows, 
without  thinking  of  appropriating  any  of  their 
splendour  for  himself,  and  when  she  spoke  again 
it  was  without  any  sensible  connection  with  the 
present  occasion. 

"Peter,  do  you  remember  Willy  Shakeley?" 

"Shakey  Willy,  we  used  to  call  him.  I 
remember  his  freckles;  they  were  the  biggest 
thing  about  him."  He  waited  for  the  commun 
icating  thread,  but  nothing  came  except  what 
presently  reached  him  out  of  his  own  young 
recollections.  "He  wasn't  good  enough  for 
you,  Ellen,"  he  said  at  last  for  all  comment. 

"He  was  kind,  and  he  wouldn't  have  minded 
about  my  being  lame,  but  a  man  has  to  have  a 
healthy  wife  if  he's  a  farmer."  How  com 
pletely  she  had  accepted  the  deprivation  for 
herself,  he  saw  by  her  not  wasting  a  sigh  over 


The  Lovely  Lady  93 

it;  she  had  schooled  herself  so  long  to  go  no 
further  in  her  thought  than  she  went  on  the 
crutch  which  tapped  now  on  the  pavement 
beside  him.  As  if  to  stop  his  going  any  further 
on  her  account  she  smiled  up  at  him.  "Peter, 
if  you  were  to  meet  any  of  the  things  you 
thought  you'd  grow  up  to  be,  do  you  suppose 
you'd  know  them?" 

At  least  he  could  have  told  her  that  he  didn't 
meet  any  of  them  on  his  way  between  Siegel 
Brothers  and  the  flat  in  Pleasanton. 

There  are  many  things  which  if  a  young  man 
goes  without  until  he  is  twenty -five  he  can  very 
well  do  without,  but  the  one  thing  he  cannot 
leave  off  without  hurting  him  is  the  expecta 
tion  of  some  time  doing  them.  The  obligation 
of  the  mortgage  and  Ellen's  lameness  had  been 
a  sort  of  bridge  for  Peter,  a  high  airy  structure 
which  engaged  the  best  of  him  and  so  carried 
him  safely  over  Blodgett's  without  once  letting 
him  fall  into  the  unlovely  vein  of  life  there,  its 
narrowness,  its  commonness.  He  had  known, 
even  when  he  had  known  it  most  inaccessible, 
that  there  was  another  life  which  answered  to 
every  instinct  of  his  for  beauty  and  fitness. 


94  The  Lovely  Lady 

He  waited  only  for  the  release  from  strain 
for  his  entry  with  it.  Now  by  the  shock 
of  his  mother's  death  he  found  himself  preci 
pitated  in  a  frame  of  living  where  a  parlour  set 
out  of  Siegel  Brothers'  Household  Emporium 
was  the  limit  of  taste  and  understanding.  The 
worst  thing  about  Siegel  Brothers'  parlour  sets 
was  that  he  sold  them.  He  knew  it  was  his 
particular  value  to  Siegel  Brothers  that  he 
had  always  known  what  sort  of  things  were 
acceptable  to  the  out-of-town  trade.  He  had 
selected  this  one  distinctly  with  an  eye  to  the 
pleasure  his  mother  and  Ellen  would  get  out 
of  what  Bloombury  would  think  of  it.  He 
hadn't  expected  it  would  turn  and  rend  him. 
That  it  was  distinctly  better  than  anything  he 
had  had  at  Blodgett's  was  inconsiderable  be 
side  the  fact  that  Blodgett's  hadn't  owned  him. 
That  he  was  owned  now  by  his  sister  and  the 
furniture,  was  plain  to  him  the  first  time  he  sat 
down  to  figure  out  the  difference  between  his 
salary  and  what  it  would  cost  him  to  let  Ellen  be 
a  burden  to  him  in  the  way  that  made  her 
happiest.  Not  that  he  thought  of  Ellen  in  that 
way;  he  was  glad  when  he  thought  of  it  at  all 


The  Lovely  Lady  95 

articulately,  to  be  able  to  make  life  so  little  of 
a  burden  to  her.  But  though  he  saw  quite 
clearly  how,  without  some  fortunate  accident, 
the  rest  of  his  life  would  be  taken  up  with 
making  a  home  for  Ellen  and  making  it  secure 
for  her  in  case  anything  happened  to  him,  he 
saw  too,  that  there  was  no  room  in  it  for  the 
Lovely  Lady.  The  worst  of  all  this  was  that 
he  did  not  see  how  he  was  to  go  on  without 
her. 

He  had  fled  to  her  from  the  inadequacy 
of  all  substitutes  for  her  that  his  life  af 
forded,  and  she  had  ended  by  making  him  over 
into  the  sort  of  man  who  could  never  be  satis 
fied  with  anything  less.  Something  he  owed, 
no  doubt,  to  that  trait  of  his  father's  which  made 
his  memories  of  Italy  more  to  him  than  his  in 
heritance,  but  there  it  was,  a  world  Peter  had 
built  up  out  of  books  and  pictures  and  music, 
more  real  and  habitable  than  that  in  which  he 
went  about  in  a  gray  business  suit  and  a  pleasant 
ready  manner;  a  world  from  which,  every  time 
he  fitted  his  key  in  the  latch  of  the  little  flat 
in  Pleasanton,  he  felt  himself  suddenly  dis 
possessed. 


96  The  Lovely  Lady 

It  was  not  that  he  failed  to  get  a  proper 
pleasure  out  of  being  a  householder,  in  being 
able  to  take  a  certain  tone  with  the  butcher  and 
discuss  water  rates  and  rents  with  other  house 
holders  going  to  and  fro  on  his  train.  Ellen's 
cooking  tasted  good  to  him  and  it  was  very 
pleasant  to  see  the  pleasure  it  gave  her  to  have 
Burnell  of  the  hardware,  out  to  supper  occa 
sionally.  He  made  friends  with  Lessing,  whose 
natty  and  determinedly  architectural  office  with 
its  air  of  being  somehow  akin  to  Wally  Whitaker, 
occupied  the  corner  where  Peter  waited  every 
morning  for  his  car.  Lessing  began  it  by  coming 
out  on  the  very  first  occasion  to  ask  him  how  his 
sister  did,  in  an  effort  to  correct  any  impression 
of  a  want  of  perspicuity  in  his  first  estimate  of 
Peter's  situation.  He  kept  it  up  for  the  reason 
perhaps  that  men  friends  are  meant  for  each 
other  from  the  beginning  of  time  quite  as  much 
as  we  are  accustomed  to  thinking  of  them  as 
being  meant  for  the  lovely  ladies  whom  they 
so  frequently  miss.  Lessing  was  about  Peter's 
own  age  and  had  large  and  cheerful  notions  of 
the  probable  increase  of  real-estate  values  in 
Pleasanton,  combined  with  a  just  appreciation 


The  Lovely  Lady  97 

of  the  simple  shrewdness  which  had  so  recom 
mended  Peter  to  his  employers. 

"You'd  be  a  crackerjack  to  talk  to  the  old 
ladies,"  Lessing  generously  praised  him.  "I 
scare  'em;  they  think  I'm  too  hopeful."  That 
he  didn't,  however,  have  the  same  effect  on 
young  ladies  was  apparent  from  the  very  pretty 
one  whom  Peter  used  to  see  about,  especially  on 
early  closing  Saturday  afternoons,  helping  him 
to  shut  up  the  office  and  get  off  to  the  ball 
game.  He  couldn't  have  told  why,  but  those 
were  the  days  when  Peter  allowed  the  car  to 
carry  him  on  to  the  next  block,  before  alight 
ing,  after  which  he  would  make  a  point  of  be 
ing  particularly  kind  to  Ellen.  It  would 
never  do  for  her  to  get  a  notion  that  the 
tapping  of  her  crutch  beside  him  had  scared 
anything  out  of  Peter's  life  which  he  might 
think  worth  having  in  it. 

Along  toward  Thanksgiving  time,  on  an 
occasion  when  Peter  had  just  missed  his  car 
and  had  to  wait  for  another  one,  Lessing 
—  J.  B.  on  the  door  sign,  though  he  was  the 
sort  that  everybody  who  knew  him  called 
Julian  —  came  quite  out  to  the  pavement  and 


98  The  Lovely  Lady 

stood  there  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets  and 
his  hair  beginning  to  curl  boyishly  in  the  damp 
ness,  quite  brimming  over  with  good  fortune. 
Singularly  he  didn't  mention  it  at  once,  but 
began  to  complain  about  the  low  state  of  the 
market  in  real  estate. 

"Not  but  that  the  values  are  all  right,"  he 
was  careful  to  explain;  "it's  just  that  they  are 
all  right  makes  it  so  trying.  If  a  fellow  had 
a  little  capital  now,  he  could  do  wonders.  The 
deuce  of  a  chap  like  me  is  that  he  hasn't  any 
capital  unless  there's  some  buying." 

"You  think  it's  a  good  time  then  to  lay  out 
a  little  money?" 

"Good!  Good!  Oh,  Lord,  it's  so  good  that 
if  a  fellow  had  a  few  thousands  just  put  around 
judiciously,  he  wouldn't  be  able  to  sleep  nights 
for  hearing  it  turn  over."  He  kicked  the  gravel 
in  sheer  impatience.  "How's  your  sister?" 

It  was  a  formula  that  he  had  kept  on  with 
because  to  have  dropped  it  immediately  might 
have  betrayed  the  extenuating  nature  of  its 
inception,  and  besides  there  were  so  many  direc 
tions  in  which  one  might  start  conversationally 
off  from  it.  He  made  use  of  it  now  without 


The  Lovely  Lady  99 

waiting  for  Peter's  habitual  "Very  well,  thank 
you,"  by  a  burst  into  confidence. 

"You  see  I'm  engaged  to  be  married  —  yes, 
I  guess  you've  seen  me  with  her.  Fact  is,  I 
haven't  cared  how  much  people  have  seen  so 
long  as  she's  seen  it,  too;  and  now  we've  got  it 
all  fixed  up,  naturally  I'm  on  the  make.  I'm 
dashed  if  I  don't  think  I'll  have  to  take  a 
partner." 

"I've  been  wanting  to  speak  to  you  about 
some  property  of  mine,"  Peter  ventured.  "It's 
a  farm  up  country." 

"What's  it  worth?" 

"Well,  I've  added  to  it  some  the  last  ten 
years  and  made  considerable  improvement.  I 
ought  to  get  three  thousand." 

"That's  for  farming?  For  summer  residence 
it  ought  to  bring  more  than  that.  Any  scenery?" 

"Plenty,"  Peter  satisfied  him  on  that  score. 
"I've  been  thinking,"  he  let  out  shyly,  "that 
if  I  could  put  the  price  of  it  in  some  place  where 
I  could  watch  it,  the  money  would  do  me  more 
good.  .  .  ." 

Lessing  turned  on  him  a  suddenly  bright 
ening  eye. 


100  The  Lovely  Lady 

"That's  the  talk  —  say,  you  know  I  think  I 
could  get  you  forty-five  hundred  for  that  farm 
of  yours  anyway."  They  looked  at  one  an 
other  on  the  verge  of  things  hopeful  and  con 
siderable.  As  Peter's  car  swung  around  the 
curve,  suddenly  they  blushed,  both  of  them,  and 
reached  out  and  shook  hands. 

That  evening  as  Peter  came  home  he  saw 
Lessing  buying  chrysanthemums  at  the  florist's 
with  a  happy  countenance,  and  to  master  the 
queer  pang  it  gave  him,  Peter  got  off  the  car 
and  walked  a  long  way  out  on  the  dim  wet 
pavement.  He  was  looking  at  the  bright  picture 
of  Lessing  and  the  girl  —  she  was  really  very 
pretty  —  and  seeing  instead,  himself,  quite  the 
bachelor,  and  his  lame  sister  taking  their  blame 
less  dull  way  in  the  world.  He  couldn't  any 
more  for  the  life  of  him,  get  a  picture  of  himself 
without  Ellen  in  it;  the  tapping  of  her  crutch 
sounded  even  in  the  House  when  he  visited  it 
in  his  dreams.  It  was  well  on  this  occasion  that 
he  had  Ellen  beside  him,  for  she  showed  him  the 
way  presently  to  take  it,  as  he  knew  she  would 
take  it  as  soon  as  he  went  home  and  told  her  — 
as  another  door  by  which  they  could  enter  sym- 


The  Lovely  Lddy  101 

pathetically  in  the  joyousness  they  were  denied. 
She  would  be  so  pleased  for  Julian's  sake,  in 
whom,  by  Peter's  account  of  him,  she  took  the 
greatest  interest,  and  so  pleased  for  the  girl  to 
have  such  a  handsome,  capable  lover.  It  made, 
for  Ellen,  a  better  thing  of  life  if  somebody 
could  have  him. 

Peter  went  back  after  a  while  with  that 
thought  to  the  florist's  and  bought  chrysanthe 
mums,  taking  care  to  ask  for  the  same  kind 
Mr.  Lessing  had  just  ordered.  He  was  feeling 
quite  cheerful  even,  as  he  ran  up  the  steps  with 
them  a  few  minutes  later,  and  saw  the  square 
of  light  under  the  half -drawn  curtain,  and  heard 
the  tap  of  Ellen's  crutch  coming  to  meet  him. 

That  night  after  he  had  gone  to  bed  a  very 
singular  thing  happened.  The  Princess  out  of 
the  picture  visited  him.  It  was  there  at  the 
foot  of  his  bed  in  a  new  frame  where  Ellen  had 
hung  it — the  young  knight  riding  down  the 
old,  lumpy  dragon,  but  with  an  air  that  Peter 
hadn't  for  a  long  time  been  able  to  manage  for 
himself,  doing  a  great  thing  easily  the  way  one 
knew  perfectly  great  things  couldn't.  The 
assistant  sales  manager  of  Siegel  Brothers  had 


102  The  Lovely  Lady 

been  lying  staring  up  at  it  for  some  time  when 
the  Princess  spoke  to  him.  He  knew  it  was  she, 
though  there  was  no  face  nor  form  that  he  could 
remember  in  his  waking  hours,  except  that  it 
was  familiar. 

"Ellen  is  right,"  she  told  him;  "it  doesn't 
really  matter  so  long  as  somebody  finds  me." 

"But  what  have  /  done?"  Peter  was  sore 
with  a  sense  of  personal  slight.  "It  wasn't  in 
the  story  that  there  should  be  a  whole  crop  of 
dragons." 

"All  dragons  are  made  so  that  where  one 
head  comes  off  there  are  seven  in  its  place; 
and  you  must  remember  if  somebody  didn't  go 
about  slaying  them,  I  couldn't  be  at  all."  This 
as  she  said  it  had  a  deep  meaning  for  Peter  that 
afterward  escaped  him.  "And  you  can  hold 
the  dream.  It  takes  a  lot  of  dreaming  to  bring 
one  like  me  to  pass." 

"I'm  sick  of  dreams,"  said  Peter.  "A  man 
dies  after  a  little  who  is  fed  on  nothing  else." 

"They  die  quicker  if  they  stop  dreaming;  on 
those  that  have  the  gift  for  it  the  business  of 
dreaming  falls.  Listen!  How  many  that  you 
know  have  found  me?" 


The  Lovely  Lady  103 

"A  great  many  think  they  have;  it  comes  to 
the  same  thing." 

"The  same  for  them;  but  you  must  see  that 
I  can  never  really  be  until  I  am  for  those  outside 
the  dream.  The  trouble  with  you  is  that  you'd 
wake  up  after  a  while  and  you  would  know." 

"Yes,"  Peter  admitted,  "I  should  know." 

"Well,  then,"  she  was  oh,  so  gentle  about  it, 
"yours  is  the  better  part.  If  you  can't  have 
me,  at  least  you're  not  stopping  me  by  leaving 
off  for  something  else.  In  the  dream  I  can 
live  and  grow,  and  you  can  grow  to  me.  Do 
you  remember  what  happened  to  Ada  Harvey? 
I've  saved  you  from  that  at  any  rate." 

"No,"  said  Peter,  "it  was  the  dragon  saved 
me.  I  thought  you  were  she.  It's  saved  me 
from  lots  of  things,  now  that  I  think  of  it." 

"Ah,  that's  what  we  have  to  do  between  us, 
Peter,  we  have  to  save  you.  You're  worth 
saving." 

"  Save  me  for  what?  "  Peter  cried  out  to  her 
and  so  strongly  in  his  loneliness  that  he  found 
himself  starting  up  from  his  bed  with  it.  He 
could  see  the  dragon  spitting  flames  as  before, 
and  the  pale  light  from  the  swinging  street  lamp 


104  The  Lovely  Lady 

gilding  the  frame  of  the  picture.  Though  he 
did  not  understand  all  that  had  happened  to 
him,  as  he  lay  down  again  he  was  more  com 
forted  than  he  had  been  at  any  time  since  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  that  he  was  to  be  a  bachelor. 


PART  FOUR 

IN  WHICH   THE   LOVELY 

LADY   MAKES  A 
FINAL  APPEARANCE 


PART  FOUR 

IN  WHICH   THE  LOVELY   LADY   MAKES  A 
FINAL  APPEARANCE 


ON  THE  day  that  the  silver-laced  maple,  then 
in  fullest  leaf,  had  passed  by  the  space  of  three 
delicate  palm-shaped  banners  the  sill  of  the 
third-story  office  window,  Lessing,  of  Weatheral, 
Lessing  &  Co.,  Brokers  in  Real  Estate,  crossed 
over  to  his  partner's  desk  before  sitting  down  at 
his  own,  and  remained  quietly  leaning  against 
it  and  looking  out  of  the  window  without  a 
word.  He  remained  there  staring  out  over 
the  new,  orderly  growth  of  the  suburb,  toward 
the  river,  until  the  stenographer  from  the  outer 
room  had  come  in  with  the  vase  which  she  had 
been  filling  with  great  golden  roses,  and  gone 
out  again,  after  placing  it  carefully  in  the  exact 
middle  of  the  top  of  the  junior  partner's  desk. 

107 


108  The  Lovely  Lady 

By  that  time  Lessing's  rather  plump,  practical 
hand  had  crept  out  along  the  rim  of  the  desk 
until  it  was  covered  by  Peter's  lean  one,  and  still 
neither  of  them  had  said  a  word.  The  roses 
had  come  in  from  Lessing's  country  place  that 
morning  in  Lessing's  car,  and  Lessing's  wife 
had  gathered  them.  There  were  exactly  seven 
teen,  full-blown  and  fragrant,  and  one  small 
bud  of  promise  which  Peter  presently  re 
moved  from  its  vase  to  his  button  hole.  The 
act  had  almost  the  significance  of  a  ritual, 
a  thing  done  many  times  with  particular  mean 
ing. 

"Somehow,"  Peter  said  as  he  fastened  it 
with  a  pin  underneath  his  lapel,  "seventeen 
years  seems  a  shorter  time  to  look  back  on  than 
to  look  forward  to." 

"Well,  when  we've  put  twenty -five  years  of 
work  into  it  —  and  that's  nothing  to  what  we'll 
get  into  the  next  seventeen."  Lessing's  tone 
keyed  admirably  with  the  bright  ample  day 
outside,  the  rapid  glint  of  the  river  and  the  tips 
of  the  maple  all  a-tremble  with  the  urgency  of 
new  growth.  The  senior  partner's  eye  roved 
from  that  to  the  restrained  richness  of  the  office 


The  Lovely  Lady  109 

furniture  from  which  the  new  was  not  yet  worn, 
and  returned  to  the  contemplation  of  the  tower 
ing  white  cumuli  beginning  to  pile  up  beyond 
the  farther  bank  of  the  river.  "There's  no 
end  to  what  a  man  can  lift,"  he  asserted  con 
fidently,  "once  he's  got  his  feet  under  him." 

"We've  carried  a  lot,"  Peter  assented  cheer 
fully,  "and  sometimes  it  was  rather  steep  going, 
but  now  it's  carrying  us.  The  question  is" 
and  here  his  voice  fell  off  a  shade  and  a  slight 
gathering  appeared  between  his  eyes — "the  real 
question  is,  I  suppose,  what  it  is  carrying  us  to." 

"  Where's  the  good  of  that?  "  Julian  protested. 
"It's  only  a  limitation  to  set  out  for  a  partic 
ular  place.  The  fun  is  in  the  going.  You 
keep  right  along  with  the  procession  until  old 
age  gets  you.  The  thing  is  just  to  keep  it  up  as 
long  as  you  can."  He  swung  himself  into  a 
sitting  posture  on  the  edge  of  the  desk  and 
noted  that  the  slight  pucker  had  not  left  his 
partner's  eyes.  "What's  the  idea?"  he  wished 
affectionately  to  know. 

"Oh,  nothing  much,  but  I  sort  of  grew  up 
with  the  idea  of  Duty  —  something  you  had  to 
do  because  there  was  nobody  else  to  do  it. 


110  The  Lovely  Lady 

You  had  not  only  to  do  it  but  you  had  to  like 
it,  not  because  it  was  likable,  but  because  it  was 
your  duty.  It  was  always  right  in  front  of  me: 
I  couldn't  see  over  or  around  it;  I  just  had  to  do 
it." 

"Well,  you  did  it,"  Lessing  corroborated. 
"Clarice  says  the  way  you've  taken  care  of 
Ellen-  -" 

"And  the  way  Ellen  has  taken  care  of  me  - 
but  then  Ellen  was  all  the  woman  I  had."  He 
caught  himself  up  swiftly  after  that;  it  was 
seldom  even  to  his  partner  that  anything 
escaped  him  in  reference  to  the  interior  life  of 
dreams  which  had  gone  on  in  him,  quite  happily 
behind  his  undistinguished  exterior.  "But 
somehow  it  hasn't  seemed  to  come  out  any 
where.  I've  done  my  duty  .  .  .  and  when 
I'm  dead  and  Ellen's  dead,  where  is  it?  After 
all,  what  have  I  done?" 

"Ah,  look  at  Pleasanton,"  Julian  reminded 
him;  "do  you  call  that  nothing?"  They 
looked  together  toward  the  esplanade  along  the 
river,  beginning  at  this  hour  to  be  flecked  with 
the  white  aprons  of  nurse-maids  and  their  charges. 
"We've  given  them  clean  water  to  drink  and 


The  Lovely  Lady  111 

clean  streets,  and  a  safe  place  for  the  children 
to  play  in.  The  fight  we  had  with  the  city 
council  for  that  .  .  .  !"  He  waved  his 
arm  again  toward  the  well-parked  river  front. 
"Ever  since  I  sold  your  farm  for  you  and  you 
began  putting  your  money  into  the  business, 
we've  walked  right  along  with  it.  Even  before 
you  left  Siegel  Brothers  and  we  used  to  sit  up 
nights  with  the  map,  planning  where  to  put 
our  money  like  a  checker-board,  we  saw  things 
like  this  for  the  town,  and  now  we've  made  'em 
true.  And  you  say  we've  done  nothing!" 
The  senior  partner  was  touched  a  little  in  his 
tenderest  susceptibilities. 

"Oh,  well,  "  Peter  admitted  with  a  shamed 
laugh,  "I  suppose  man  is  an  incurable  egotist. 
I  was  thinking  of  something  more  personal, 
something  mine,  the  way  a  book  or  a  picture 
belongs  to  the  man  who  makes  it." 

"The  game  isn't  over  yet,"  Lessing  reminded 
him,  with  a  glance  at  the  unfolding  bud  which 
Clarice  had  sent  as  a  symbol  of  the  opening 
year;  "you're  only  forty.  And,  anyway,  the 
money's  yours;  you  made  it."  Something  in 
the  word  recalled  him  to  a  thought  that  had 


The  Lovely  Lady 

been  earlier  in  his  mind.  "Clarice  wanted  me 
to  ask  you  to-day  if  you  had  any  idea  how  much 
you  are  worth." 

Peter's  attention  came  back  from  the  win 
dow  with  a  start.  "Does  that  mean  the  Fresh 
Air  Fund  or  the  Association  for  the  Protection 
of  Ownerless  Pups?" 

Julian  grinned.  "Ownerless  bachelors  rather. 
Clarice  has  an  idea  you  are  well  enough  off  to 
marry." 

"If  it  were  a  proposition  of  my  being  married 
to  Clarice  I  should  consider  myself  well  enough 

off  without  anything  else "  Peter  dropped 

the  light,  accustomed  banter  for  a  sober  tone. 
"How  well  off  does  your  wife  think  I  ought  to 
be?" 

"She's  got  it  figured  out  that  all  you've  spent 
on  making  Ellen  comfortable  for  life  isn't  a 
patch  on  what  she  and  the  boys  cost  me,  so  it's 
high  time  you  set  about  your  natural  destiny 
of  making  some  woman  happy." 

"Look  here,  Julian,  is  it  an  object  for  a 
man  to  live  for,  making  some  woman  happy?" 

"Well,  it  keeps  you  on  the  jump  all  right," 
Lessing  assured  him.  "What  else  is  there? 


The  Lovely  Lady  113 

It's  a  way  of  making  yourself  happy  when  you 
come  to  look  at  it;  keeping  her  and  the  kids  so 
that  you  leave  the  world  better  off  than  you 
found  it.  It  suits  me."  He  was  looking,  indeed, 
particularly  well  suited,  in  spite  of  a  disposi 
tion  to  portliness  and  a  suspicion  of  thinning 
hair,  with  what  the  seventeen  years  just 
past  had  brought  him.  A  warm  appreciation 
of  what  those  things  were  touched  his  regard 
for  his  companion  with  a  sober  affectionateness. 
"I  reckon  Clarice  is  right:  a  wife  and  a  couple 
of  kids  is  the  prescription  for  your  case.  That's 
why  she  wanted  me  to  remind  you  that  you 
could  afford  'em." 

"And  has  she  named  the  day?"  Peter 
wished  to  know  whimsically. 

"Oh,   I  say,   Weatheral  - 

"My  dear  Julian,  if  I  hadn't  been  able  to  see 
what  Clarice  has  been  up  to  for  the  last  six 
months,  at  least  I  could  have  depended  on 
Ellen  to  see  it  for  me." 

"She  doesn't  object,  does  she?" 

"Oh,  if  you  think  the  privilege  of  being  aunt 
to  your  children  has  made  up  to  her  for  not 
being  aunt  to  mine " 


114  The  Lovely  Lady 

"The  privilege  is  on  the  other  side.  But 
anyway,  I'm  glad  you  got  on  to  it.  I  didn't 
want  to  be  a  spoil  sport.  I  suppose  women's 
instincts  can  be  trusted  in  these  things,  but  I 
hated  to  see  Clarice  coming  it  over  you  blind." 

Peter  wondered  to  himself  a  little,  which  of  the 
charming  ladies  to  whom  he  had  been  intro 
duced  lately,  Clarice  had  selected  for  him.  He 
wasn't,  however,  concerned  about  her  coming 
it  blind  over  anybody  but  the  senior  partner 
who  got  down  now  from  the  desk,  whistling 
softly  and  walking  with  a  wide  step  as  a  man 
will  in  June  when  affairs  go  well  with  him,  and 
he  feels  that  if  there  are  still  some  things  which 
he  desires  he  is  able  to  get  them  for  himself. 

"Don't  forget  you're  coming  to  us  on  Satur 
day;  and  we  dine  together  to-night  as  usual." 

"As  usual."  Always  on  the  anniversary  of 
their  beginning  business  together  Weatheral 
and  Lessing,  who  were  still,  in  spite  of  seeing 
one  another  daily  for  seventeen  years,  able  to 
be  interested  in  one  another,  dined  apart  from 
their  families,  savouring  pleasantly  that  essen 
tial  essence  of  maleness,  the  mutual  power  of 
work  well  accomplished.  It  was  the  best  trib- 


The  Lovely  Lady  115 

ute  that  Clarice  and  Ellen  could  pay  to  the 
occasion  that  they  understood  that,  much  as 
their  several  lives  had  profited  by  the  partner 
ship,  they  were  still  and  naturally  outside 
of  it. 

On  this  occasion,  however,  it  was  impossible 
for  Peter  to  keep  Mrs.  Lessing  out  of  the  back 
ground  of  his  consciousness,  because  of  the  part 
her  suggestion  of  the  morning  played  in  new 
realization  of  himself  as  the  rich  Mr.  Weatheral 
of  Pleasanton.  He  credited  her  with  sufficient 
knowledge  of  his  character  to  have  egged  Julian 
on  to  the  reminder  as  a  part  of  the  game  she 
had  played  with  him  for  the  past  two  or  three 
years,  by  which  Peter  was  to  be  instated  in  a 
life  more  in  keeping  with  his  opportunities. 

It  was  a  game  Clarice  played  with  life  every 
where,  coaxing  it  to  yield  its  choicest  bloom  to 
her.  She  had  an  instinct  for  choiceness  like 
a  hummingbird,  darting  here  and  there  for 
sweetness.  Her  flutterings  were  never  of  un 
certainty  but  such  as  kept  her  in  the  perfect 
airy  poise.  If  she  wanted  marriage  for  Peter 
it  was  because  she  could  imagine  nothing  better 
for  anybody  than  a  marriage  like  hers,  and  if 


116  The  Lovely  Lady 

she  chose  this  time  for  letting  him  know  that 
she  was  thinking  of  it,  it  was  because  in  those 
terms  she  could  bring  closest  to  him  his  new 
found  possibilities.  If  she  could  have  reached 
Peter  with  the  personal  certainty  of  riches  by 
explaining  to  him  how  far  his  dollars  would 
stretch  end  to  end,  or  how  many  acres  of  post 
age  stamps  he  could  buy  with  them,  she  might 
have  thought  less  of  him  on  that  account,  but 
she  would  have  helped  him  to  understanding 
even  on  those  terms.  You  couldn't  have  made 
Clarice  Lessing  believe  that  whatever  their 
limitations,  people  weren't  entitled  to  help  sim 
ply  because  they  needed  it. 

It  had  come  upon  Peter  by  leaps  and  bounds 
during  the  last  two  or  three  years,  both  the 
wealth  and  the  necessity  of  putting  it  to  him 
self  in  terms  of  personal  expression.  During 
the  first  ten  years  of  the  partnership,  the  only 
use  for  money  the  simple  needs  of  Ellen  and 
himself  had  established  was  to  put  it  back  into 
the  business;  a  use  which  had  become  almost 
an  obligation  during  the  time  when  both  chil 
dren  and  opportunity  were  coming  to  Julian 
faster  than  the  cash  to  meet  them.  It  was  due 


The  Lovely  Lady  117 

to  the  high  ground  that  Clarice  had  made  for 
them  all  out  of  what  she  and  the  children  stood 
for,  that  Peter's  superior  cash  contribution  to 
the  firm  had  become  a  privilege.  They  had 
had,  he  and  Ellen,  their  stringent  occasions; 
it  had  been  Clarice's  part  to  see  that  since  they 
endured  the  pinch  of  poverty  theyj  should  at 
least  get  something  human  out  of  it.  It  came 
out  for  Peter  pleasantly  as  he  walked  home 
through  the  mild  June  evening,  just  how  much 
they  had  had.  Much,  much  more  than  they 
would  have  been  able  to  buy  with  the  money 
they  might  in  strict  equity  have  withdrawn 
from  the  business.  Nothing,  he  had  long 
admitted,  that  he  could  have  purchased  for  his 
sister  would  have  been  so  satisfying  as  what 
Clarice  contributed,  pressing  the  full  cup  of 
her  motherhood  to  Ellen's  thirsty  lips.  They 
might  have  grown  sleek,  he  and  Ellen,  without 
exceeding  a  proper  ratio  of  expenditure,  and  if 
in  the  end  they  had  been  a  little  less  rich,  they 
would  still  have  had  enough  to  go  on  being  sleek 
and  comfortable  to  the  end.  That  he  was  still 
fit,  as  Mrs.  Lessing's  transparent  efforts  to 
marry  him  to  her  friends  guaranteed  him  to  be, 


118  The  Lovely  Lady 

he  felt  was  owing  greatly  to  the  terms  on  which 
Clarice  had  admitted  him  to  the  adventure  of 
bringing  up  a  family.  That  a  special  fitness 
was  required  for  admission  to  Mrs.  Lessing's 
circle  he  would  have  guessed  even  without  the 
aid  of  print  which  consistently  described  it  as 
Our  Best  Society,  for  it  was  a  Best  attested  to 
by  all  the  marks  by  which  Clarice  herself  ex 
pressed  the  essential  fineness  of  things. 

One  couldn't  have  told,  from  anything  that 
appeared  on  the  surface  of  the  Lessing's  social 
environment,  that  life  did  not  proceed  there  as 
it  did  between  Clarice  and  the  Weatherals,  by 
means  of  its  subtler  sympathies,  and  proceed,  at 
least  so  far  as  the  women  were  concerned,  on  a 
still  higher  plane  of  grace  and  harmony.  It 
moved  about  her  table  and  across  the  lawns  of 
Lessing's  handsome  country  place,  with  such 
soundless  ease  and  perfection  as  it  had  glided  for 
Peter  through  the  House  with  the  Shining  Walls. 
Or  at  least  so  it  had  seemed  on  those  occasions 
during  the  last  few  years  when  he  had  found 
himself  wondrously  inside  it. 

It  had  been  accepted  by  Ellen  on  the  mere 
certainty  of  Clarice's  mother  having  been  one 


The  Lovely  Lady  119 

of  the  Thatcher  Inwoods,  that  Clarice  should 
enlarge  her  social  borders  with  Lessing's  in 
creasing  means  until  they  included  people 
among  whom  Ellen  would  have  been  miserably 
shy  and  out  of  tune.  But  not  Ellen  herself 
guessed  how  much  of  Peter's  admission  to  its 
inaccessibility  was  owing  to  the  returns  from 
hardly  snatched  options  and  long-nursed  oppor 
tunities,  coming  in  in  checks  of  six  figures. 
Perhaps  Clarice  herself  never  knew.  It  was 
one  of  the  things  that  went  with  being  a  That 
cher  Inwood,  wherever  an  occasion  presented  a 
handle  of  nobility,  to  seize  by  that  and  main 
tain  it  in  the  face  of  any  contingent  smallness. 
Clarice  wouldn't  have  introduced  Peter  to  her 
friends  if  he  hadn't  been  fit,  and  it  was  part  of 
the  social  creed  of  women  like  Clarice  Lessing, 
which  takes  almost  the  authority  of  religion, 
that  he  wouldn't  have  been  in  a  position  to  be 
introduced  if  he  hadn't  been  fit.  So  it  had 
happened  for  the  past  two  years  that  Peter  had 
found  himself  skirting  the  fringe  of  Best  Society, 
and  identifying  it  with  the  life  he  had  lived  so 
long,  sitting  with  his  book  open  on  his  knees 
in  their  little  flat,  with  Ellen  across  the  fire 


120  The  Lovely  Lady 

from  him  knitting  white  things  for  Julian's 
children.  But  the  idea  that  having  come  into 
this  neighbourhood  of  fine  appreciations  he 
was  to  take  up  his  home  and  live  there,  opened 
more  slowly.  It  required  more  than  one  of 
Clarice's  swift  hummingbird  darts,  more  than 
the  flutter  of  suggestion  to  brush  its  petals 
awake  for  him. 

It  lay  so  deep  under  all  the  years,  the  power 
of  loving.  He  knew  almost  nothing  about  it 
except  that  he  had  had  it  once,  and  that  mar 
riage  without  it  would  be  unthinkable,  even 
such  a  marriage  as  Mrs.  Lessing  had  let  him  see 
was  now  possible  to  him.  She  had  called  with 
all  her  delicate  friendly  skill,  on  something 
which  only  now  under  that  summons  he  began 
to  miss.  It  was  like  a  lost  word  in  every  sen 
tence  in  which  the  ordinary  hopes  of  men  are  to 
be  read,  and  he  felt  that  until  he  found  it  again 
all  the  help  Mrs.  Lessing  could  afford  him  would 
not  enable  him  to  think  of  marriage  as  a  thing 
desirable  in  itself.  It  was  missing  in  him  still, 
when  he  came  that  night  rather  late  to  the 
apartment  where  only  the  Japanese  houseboy 
awaited  him.  One  of  the  first  things  he  had 


The  Lovely  Lady 

done  for  Ellen  with  his  increasing  means,  had 
been  to  buy  back  for  her  the  house  at  Bloom- 
bury  with  the  garden  and  a  bit  of  the  orchard- 
She  had  been  there  now  since  Decoration 
Day,  retiring  more  and  more  into  the  kindly 
village  life  as  a  point  of  vantage  from  which  to 
mark  with  pride  the  social  distance  that  Peter 
travelled  from  her.  It  had  been  understood 
from  the  beginning  that  she  wasn't  to  go  with 
him.  The  tapping  of  her  crutch  was  no  more 
to  be  heard  in  the  new  gracious  existence  than 
in  the  House  where  she  had  never  followed  him. 
Life  for  Ellen  was  lived  close  at  hand.  There 
were  hollyhocks  and  currant  bushes  in  her 
garden  and  Julian's  children  overran  it. 

It  was  not  Ellen  then  that  Peter  missed  as 
he  sat  alone  in  the  house  that  night  with  his 
back  to  the  lowered  light  and  his  gaze  seeking 
the  river  and  the  flitting  shapes  of  boats  that 
went  up  and  down  on  it,  freighted  with  young 
voices  and  laughter.  He  missed  the  Lovely 
Lady.  He  knew  now  why  he  had  not  been 
able  to  think  of  marriage  in  the  way  Clarice 
held  it  out  to  him,  as  a  happy  contingency  of  his 
now  being  as  rich  as  he  had  intended  to  be.  It 


The  Lovely  Lady 

was  because  he  had  not  thought  of  her  clearly 
for  a  long  time. 

There  had  been  a  period  in  the  beginning  of 
his  life  with  Ellen,  when  the  lady  of  his  dreams 
had  been  so  near  the  surface  of  all  his  thinking 
that  she  took  on  form  and  likeness  from  any 
thing  that  was  lovely  and  young  in  his  neigh 
bourhood,  but  as  things  lovely  and  young 
drifted  from  him  with  the  years;  and  as  ,the 
business  took  deeper  and  deeper  hold  on  his 
attention,  she  had  become  a  mere  floating  fig 
ment,  a  live  fluttering  spark  in  the  very  core  of 
all  his  imaginings. 

She  had  been  beside  him,  a  pleasant,  indeter 
minate  presence  in  the  long  journey  she  travelled 
from  the  printed  page  to  the  accompanying  click 
of  Ellen's  needles.  Sometimes  at  the  opera  she 
took  on  a  gossamer  tint  from  the  singer's  face, 
and  longer  ago  than  he  could  afford  operas, 
he  had  understood  that  all  the  beauty  of  the 
world,  bursting  apple  buds,  the  great  curve 
of  the  surf  that  set  the  beaches  trembling, 
derived  somehow  its  pertinence  from  her.  Now 
at  the  age  of  forty  he  had  ceased  to  think  very 
much  about  the  Lovely  Lady. 


The  Lovely  Lady  123 

It  occurred  to  him  that  this  might  have  some 
thing  to  do  with  his  failure  to  get  a  new  rela 
tion  to  life  out  of  his  new  wealth. 

It  had  struck  Peter  rather  forlornly  during 
the  past  few  years  that  there  was  little  use  he 
could  put  money  to,  except  to  make  more 
money.  He  could  see  by  turning  his  head  to 
the  room  behind  him  how  little  there  was  there 
of  what  he  had  fancied  once  riches  would  bring 
him.  The  lines  of  the  room  were  good,  the 
amount  of  the  annual  rent  assured  that  to  him, 
the  furniture  was  good  and  the  rugs  expensive. 
Ellen  believed  that  money  in  rugs  was  a  good 
investment,  particularly  if  the  colours  were 
strong  and  would  stand  fading.  There  were 
some  choice  things  here  and  there,  a  vase  and 
pictures  which  Peter  had  chosen  for  himself, 
though  he  was  aware,  as  he  took  them  in  under 
the  dull  glow,  that  Ellen  had  arranged  them  in 
strict  reference  to  the  size  of  the  frames,  and 
that  the  whole  effect  failed  of  satisfaction.  He 
thought  his  life  might  be  somewhat  like  that 
room,  full  of  good  things  but  lacking  the  touch 
that  should  set  them  in  fruitful  order.  It  stole 
over  him  as  persuasively  as  the  warm  growing 


124  The  Lovely  Lady 

smell  of  the  park  below  him  that  the  something 
missed  might  be  the  touch  and  presence  of  the 
Lovely  Lady. 


II 


It  was  the  late  end  of  the  afternoon  when 
Peter  stepped  off  the  train  at  the  Lessing's 
station  and  into  the  trap  that  was  waiting  for 
him.  He  learned  from  Lessing's  man  that 
the  family  had  been  kept  by  the  tennis  match 
at  Maplemont  and  he  was  to  come  on  to  the 
house  at  his  leisure.  That  being  the  case, 
Peter  took  the  reins  himself  and  made  a  long 
detour  through  the  dust-smelling  country  roads, 
so  that  it  was  quite  six  when  he  reached  the 
house,  and  everybody  dressing  for  the  early 
dinner. 

He  made  so  hasty  a  change  himself  in  his  fear 
of  being  late,  that  when  he  came  down  to  the 
living-room  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  there  was 
no  one  there  to  meet  him.  Absorbed  particles 
of  the  bright  day  gave  off  in  the  dusk  and  made 
it  golden.  There  were  honeysuckles  on  the  per 
gola  outside,  and  in  the  room  beyond  a  girl  sing- 


The  Lovely  Lady  125 

ing  a  quiet  air,  half- trilled  and  half-forgotten. 
He  heard  the  singer  moving  toward  him  through 
the  vacant  house,  of  which  the  doors  stood  open 
to  the  evening  coolness,  and  the  click  of  the 
electric  button  as  she  passed,  and  saw  the  rooms 
burst  one  by  one  into  the  bloom  of  shaded  lights. 
So  she  came,  busy  with  the  hummed  fragments 
of  her  songs,  and  turned  the  lamp  full  on  Peter 
before  she  was  aware  of  him,  but  she  was  not 
half  so  much  disconcerted. 

"You  must  be  Mr.  Weatheral,"  she  said, 
"Mrs.  Lessing  sent  me  to  say  she  expected  you. 
I  am  Miss  Good  ward." 

She  gave  him  her  hand  for  a  gracious  moment 
before  she  turned  to  what  had  brought  her  so 
early  down,  the  arrangement  of  two  great 
bowls  of  wild  ferns  and  vines  which  a  servant 
had  just  placed  on  either  end  of  the  low  mantle- 
piece. 

"We  brought  them  in  from  Archer's  Glen  on 
the  way  home,"  she  told  him  over  her  shoulder » 
her  hands  busy  with  deft,  quick  touches.  She 
was  all  in  white,  which  took  a  pearly  lustre  from 
the  lamps,  and  for  the  moment  she  was  as 
beautiful  as  Peter  believed  her.  A  tiny  un- 


126  The  Lovely  Lady 

finished  phrase  of  the  song  floated  half  con 
sciously  from  her  lips  as  a  bubble.  "They  look 
better  so,  don't  you  think?  "  As  she  stood  off  to 
measure  the  effect,  it  seemed  to  Peter  that  the 
Spirit  of  the  House  had  received  him;  it  was  so 
men  dream  of  home-coming,  without  sensible 
displacement  of  a  life  going  on  in  it,  lovely  and 
secure,  as  a  bark  slips  into  some  still  pool  to  its 
moorings.  He  yielded  himself  naturally  to  the 
impersonal  intimacy  of  her  welcome  and  all  the 
sordid  ways  of  his  life  led  up  to  her. 

It  was  not  all  at  once  he  saw  it  so.  He  kept 
watching  her  all  that  evening  as  one  watches  a 
perfect  thing,  a  bird  or  a  dancer,  sensing  in  the 
slim  turn  of  her  ankle,  the  lithe  throat,  the 
delicate  perfume  that  she  shook  from  her  sum 
mer  draperies,  so  many  strokes  of  a  master  hand. 
She  was  evidently  on  terms  with  the  Lessings 
which  permitted  her  acceptance  of  him  at  the 
family  valuation,  but  the  perfection  of  her 
method  was  such  that  it  never  quite  sunk  his 
identity  as  the  junior  partner  in  his  character 
of  Uncle  Peter. 

This  was  a  nuance,  if  Peter  had  but  known  it, 
which  Eunice  Goodward  could  have  no  mote 


The  Lovely  Lady  127 

missed  than  she  could  have  eaten  with  her 
knife.  She  had  been  trained  to  the  finer  so 
cial  adjustments  as  to  a  cult:  Clarice's  game 
of  persuading  life  to  present  itself  with  a  smiling 
countenance,  played  all  in  the  key  of  personal 
relations.  It  was  as  if  Nature,  having  tried  her 
hand  at  a  great  many  ordinary  persons,  each  with 
one  gift  of  sympathy  or  graciousness,  had  culled 
and  compacted  the  best  of  them  into  Eunice 
Goodward ;  which  was  precisely  the  case  except 
that  Peter  through  his  unfamiliarity  with  the 
Best  Society  couldn't  be  expected  to  know  that 
the  intelligence  which  had  put  together  so  much 
perfectness  was  no  less  calculating  than  that 
which  goes  to  the  matching  of  a  string  of  pearls. 
All  that  he  got  from  it  was  precisely  all  that  he 
was  meant  to  receive  —  namely,  the  conviction 
that  she  couldn't  have  charmed  him  so  had  she 
not  been  altogether  charming. 

And  as  yet  he  did  not  know  what  had  hap 
pened  to  him.  He  thought,  when  he  awoke  in 
the  morning  to  a  new  realization  of  the  satis- 
f actoriness  of  living,  that  the  fresh  air  had  done 
it,  the  breath  of  the  nearby  untrimmed  forest, 
the  loose-leaved  roses  pressed  against  the  pane 


128  The  Lovely  Lady 

beginning  to  give  off  warm  odours  in  the  sun. 
Then  he  came  out  on  the  terrace  and  saw  Eunice 
Goodward,  looking  like  a  thin  slip  of  the  morn 
ing  herself,  in  a  blue  dress  buttoned  close  to  her 
figure  with  wide  white  buttons  and  a  tiny  froth 
of  white  at  the  short  sleeves  and  open  throat. 
Across  her  bosom  it  was  caught  with  a  blue 
stone  set  in  dull  silver,  which  served  also  to 
hold  in  place  a  rose  that  matched  the  morning 
tint  of  her  skin.  She  was  talking  with  the 
Lessings'  chauffeur  as  Peter  came  up  with  her 
and  all  her  accents  were  of  dismay.  They 
were  to  have  driven  over  to  Maplemont  that 
afternoon,  she  explained  to  Peter,  for  the  last 
of  the  tennis  sets,  and  now  Gilmore  had  just 
told  her  that  the  car  must  go  to  the  shop  for  two 
or  three  days.  She  was  so  much  more  charm 
ing  in  the  way  she  forgave  Gilmore  for  her 
evident  disappointment  that  he,  being  a  young 
man  and  troubled  by  a  sense  of  moral  respon 
sibility,  was  quite  overcome  by  it. 

"But,  nonsense"  j  Peter  was  certain  "there 
is  always  something  can  be  done  to  cars." 
There  was,  Gilmore  assured  him,  but  it  took 
time  to  do  it,  and  to-morrow  would  be  Sunday. 


The  Lovely  Lady  129 

"If  you'd  only  thought  to  come  down  in  the 
motor  yourself,  sir  —  "  the  chauffeur  re 
proached  him.  The  truth  was  that  Peter  hadn't 
a  car  of  his  own  and  Gilmore  knew  it.  There 
was  an  electric  runabout  which  had  gone  down 
to  Bloombury  with  Ellen,  and  a  serviceable 
roadster  which  was  part  of  the  office  equipment, 
but  the  rich  Mr.  Weatheral  had  never  taken 
the  pains  to  own  a  private  car.  Now,  as  he 
hastily  drew  out  his  watch,  it  occurred  to  him 
that  Lessing's  chauffeur  was  a  fellow  of  more 
perspicuity  than  he  had  given  him  credit  for. 
The  two  men  communicated  wordlessly  across 
the  cool  width  of  the  terrace  steps. 

"At  what  hour,"  Peter  wished  to  know, 
"would  we  have  to  leave  here  to  reach  Maple- 
mont  in  good  time?  Then  if  you  can  be  ready 
to  leave  the  moment  my  car  gets  here  .  .  ." 
He  excused  himself  to  go  to  the  telephone;  half 
an  hour  later  when  he  joined  the  family  at 
breakfast  he  had  discovered  some  of  the  things 
that,  besides  making  more  money  with  it,  can  be 
done  with  money. 

The  knowledge  suited  him  like  his  own  gar 
ment,  as  if  it  had  been  lying  ready  for  him  to 


130  The  Lovely  Lady 

put  on  when  the  occasion  required  it,  and  now 
became  him  admirably.  He  perceived  it  to  be 
a  proper  male  function  to  produce  easily  and 
with  precision  whatever  utterly  charming 
young  ladies  might  reasonably  require.  He 
appreciated  Miss  Good  ward's  acceptance  of  it 
as  she  came  down  from  the  house  bewilder- 
ingly  tied  into  soft  veils  for  the  afternoon's 
drive,  as  a  part  of  her  hall-marked  fineness. 
If  she  couldn't  help  knowing,  taking  in  the 
car's  glittering  newness  from  point  to  point, 
that  its  magnificence  had  materialized  out  of 
her  simple  wish  for  it,  she  at  least  didn't  allow 
him  to  think  it  was  any  more  than  she  would 
have  expected  of  him.  So  completely  did  he 
yield  himself  to  this  new  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things  that  it  came  as  a  shock  to  have  her,  as 
soon  as  they  had  joined  themselves  to  the 
holiday-coloured  crowd  that  streamed  and 
shifted  under  the  bright  boughs  of  Maplemont, 
reft  from  him  by  friendly,  compelling  voices, 
and  particularly  by  Burton  Henderson,  who 
played  singles  and  went  about  bareheaded  and 
singularly  self-possessed.  It  was  unthinkable 
to  Peter  that,  in  view  of  her  recently  discovered 


The  Lovely  Lady  131 

importance  in  putting  him  at  rights  with  him 
self,  that  he  hadn't  arranged  with  her  that  they 
were  to  be  more  together.  For  the  moment  it 
was  almost  a  derogation  of  her  charm  that  she 
shouldn't  herself  have  recognized  by  some 
overt  act  her  extraordinary  opportunity.  And 
then  in  a  moment  more  he  perceived  that  she 
had  recognized  it.  He  had  only  to  wait,  as 
he  saw,  and  he  would  find  himself  pleasantly 
beside  her,  and  at  each  renewal  of  the  excluding 
companionship,  he  was  more  subtly  aware  that 
it  was  accorded  not  to  anything  he  was  but  to 
what  she  had  it  in  her  power  so  beautifully  to 
make  of  him. 

So  perfectly  did  she  strike  the  key  with  him, 
when,  in  the  intervals  of  the  afternoon's  enter 
tainment  they  found  themselves  sitting  or 
walking  together,  that  he  could  not  have 
imagined  her  to  have  been  out  of  it,  not  even 
in  a  rather  long  session  after  tea  with  Burton 
Henderson  among  the  rhododendrons,  in  which 
it  was  apparent  from  the  young  man's  manner 
that  she  hadn't  at  least  been  in  tune  with  him. 
It  occurred  just  as  they  were  leaving  and  served 
in  the  flutter  of  delay  it  occasioned  to  fix  the 


132  The  Lovely  Lady 

attention  of  all  their  party  on  Eunice  coming 
out  of  the  shrubbery  with  young  Henderson  in 
her  wake,  batting  aimlessly  at  the  grass-tops 
with  the  racquet  which  he  still  carried.  There 
was  an  air  of  sulkiness  about  him  which  caused 
Mrs.  Lessing  enigmatically  to  say  that  Eunice 
was  altogether  too  good  to  that  young  man.  To 
which  Lessing's  "Well,  if  she  is,  he  doesn't  seem 
to  appreciate,"  served  also  to  confirm  Peter 
in  the  role  which  the  effect  she  produced  on 
himself  had  created  for  him.  He  at  least 
appreciated  the  way  in  which  she  had  made 
him  feel  himself  the  Distributer  of  Benefits,  to 
a  degree  which  made  it  almost  obligatory  of 
her  to  go  on  with  it. 

Successfully  as  Miss  Goodward  had  kept  for 
Peter  during  the  day  his  new  relation  to  his 
wealth  on  the  one  hand  and  society  on  the 
other,  she  seemed  that  evening  quite  to  have 
abandoned  him.  While  the  family  was  having 
coffee  on  the  terrace  after  dinner,  she  slipped 
away  from  them  to  reappear  lower  down  among 
the  rose  trees,  her  white  dress  gathering  all 
that  was  left  of  the  lingering  glow.  The  junior 
partner,  feeling  himself  never  so  much  junior, 


The  Lovely  Lady  133 

though  he  knew  it  was  but  a  scant  year  or  two, 
sat  on  through  Lessing's  inconsequential  com 
ment  on  business  and  the  day's  adventures, 
hearing  not  a  word;  now  and  then  his  chair 
creaked  with  the  intensity  of  his  preoccupation. 
It  grew  dusk  and  the  lamps  blossomed  in  the 
house  behind  them;  presently  Clarice  slipped 
away  to  the  children  and  the  evening  damp  fell 
over  the  rose  garden.  Peter  could  endure  it  no 
longer.  He  believed  as  he  rose  suddenly  with 
a  stretching  movement  that  he  meant  merely 
to  relieve  the  tension  of  sitting  by  pacing  up 
and  down;  it  was  unaccountable  therefore  that 
he  should  find  himself  at  the  edge  of  the  terrace. 
He  wondered  why  on  earth  Clarice  couldn't 
have  helped  him  a  little,  and  then  as  if  in  re 
sponse  to  his  deep  instinctive  demand  upon 
her,  he  heard  her  call  softly  to  her  husband  from 
the  door  of  the  house.  At  the  scrape  of  Julian's 
chair  on  the  terrace  tiling,  Peter  cast  away  his 
cigar  and  hurried  into  the  dusk  of  the  garden. 

He  found  her  at  last  by  the  herbacious  border, 
keeping  touch  with  the  flight  of  a  sphinx-head 
moth  along  the  tall  white  rockets  of  phlox. 
Peter  whipped  out  his  handkerchief  and 


134  The  Lovely  Lady 

dropped  it  deftly  over  the  fluttering  wings.  In  a 
moment  he  had  stilled  them  in  his  hand.  Miss 
Goodward  cried  out  to  him: 

"You've  spoiled  his  happy  evening!" 

"He's  not  hurt.  .  .  ."  Peter  laid  the 
moth  gently  on  a  feathery  flower  head,  and  the 
tiny  whispering  whirr  began  again.  "I  thought 
you  wanted  him." 

"I  did  —  but  not  to  catch  him,"  Miss  Good- 
ward  explained.  "I  wanted  just  to  want 
him." 

"Ah,  I'm  afraid  I'm  one  of  those  people  with 
whom  to  want  a  thing  is  to  go  after  it,"  Peter 
justified  himself. 

"So  one  gathers  from  what  one  hears."  She 
brushed  him  as  lightly  with  the  compliment  as 
with  the  wings  of  a  moth.  "I  wasn't  really 
wanting  him  so  much  as  I  was  wanting  to  be 
him  for  a  while.  Just  to  pass  from  one  lovely 
hour  to  another  and  nothing  to  pay!  But  we 
humans  have  always  to  pay  something." 

"Or  some  one  pays  for  us." 

"Well,  isn't  that  worse  .  .  .  taking  it 
out  of  somebody  else?" 

"I'm  not  so  sure;  some  people  enjoy  paying. 


The  Lovely  Lady  135 

It's  not  a  bad  feeling,  I  assure  you:  being  able 
to  pay.  Haven't  you  found  that  out  yet?" 

"Not  in  Trethgarten  Square."  Mrs.  Less- 
ing  had  managed  to  let  him  know  during  the 
day  that  her  guest  had  been  reared  within  the 
sacred  pale  of  those  first  families  in  whom  the 
choice  stock  of  humanness  is  refined  by  being 
maintained  at  precisely  the  same  level  for  at 
least  three  generations. 

"In  Trethgarten  Square,"  Peter  reminded 
her,  "we  are  told  that  you  settle  your  account 
just  by  being;  that  you  manage  somehow  to 
become  something  so  superior  and  delectable 
that  the  rest  of  us  are  willing  to  pay  for  the 
privilege  of  having  you  about."  He  would 
have  liked  to  add  that  recently,  no  later  in  fact 
than  the  evening  before,  he  had  come  to  think 
that  this  was  so,  but  as  she  hesitated  in  her 
walk  beside  him,  he  saw  that  she  was  con 
cerned  in  putting  the  case  to  herself  quite  as 
much  as  to  him. 

"It's  not  that  exactly;  more  perhaps  that  our 
whole  thought  about  life  is  to  live  it  so  that  there 
won't  be  anything  to  pay.  We  have  to  manage 
to  add  things  up  like  a  column  of  figures  with 


136  The  Lovely  Lady 

nothing  to  carry.  Perhaps  that's  why  we  get  so 
little  out  of  it." 

"Don't  you?" — he  was  genuinely  surprised, 
"get  anything  out  of  it,  I  mean." 

"Oh,  but  I'm  a  selfish  beast,  I  suppose!  I 
want  more  —  more!"  They  swung  as  she 
spoke  into  a  broad  beam  of  yellow  light  raying 
out  from  the  library  window,  and  he  saw  by  it 
that  with  the  word  she  flung  out  her  arms  with 
a  lovely  upward  motion  that  lifted  his  mood  to 
the  crest  of  audacity. 

"If  you  keep  on  looking  like  that,"  Peter 
assured  her,  "you'll  get  it."  He  was  struck 
dumb  immediately  after  with  apprehension. 
It  sounded  daring,  like  a  thing  said  in  a  book; 
but  she  took  it  as  it  came  lightly  off  the  tip  of 
his  impulse,  laughing.  "Yes  .  .  .  the 
great  difficulty  is  choosing  which  of  so  many 
things  one  really  wants."  They  walked  on 
then  in  silence,  the  air  darkling  after  the  sudden 
shaft  of  illumination,  the  light  folds  of  her  scarf 
brushing  his  sleeve.  Peter  was  considering 
how  he  might  say,  without  precipitation,  how 
suddenly  she  had  limited  and  defined  all  the 
things  that  he  wanted  by  expressing  them 


The  Lovely  Lady  137 

so  perfectly  in  herself,  when  she  interrupted 
him. 

"There's  our  moth  again,"  she  pointed;  "he 
settles  it  by  taking  all  of  them.  It's  a  pos 
sibility  denied  to  us." 

"Even  he,"  Peter  insisted,  "has  to  reckon  with 
such  incidents  as  my  dropping  on  him  just  now. 
I  might  have  wanted  him  for  a  collection." 

"Oh,  if  he  takes  us  into  account  it  must  be  as 
men  used  to  think  of  the  gods  walking."  Sud 
denly  the  familiar  beds  and  hedges  widened 
for  Peter;  they  stretched  warm  and  tender 
to  the  borders  of  youth  and  the  unmatched 
Wonder.  ...  It  was  so  they  had  talked 
when  they  walked  together  in  the  Garden  which 
was  about  the  House.  .  .  . 

For  some  time  after  Miss  Goodward  left 
him  Peter  remained  walking  up  and  down, 
thinking  of  many  things  and  unable  to  think 
of  them  clearly  because  of  a  pleasant  blur  of 
excitement  in  his  brain.  As  he  came  finally 
back  to  the  house  he  heard  the  Lessings  talking 
front  behind  one  of  the  open  windows. 

"My  word,  that  car  was  never  out  of  the 
shop  before,"  Julian  was  saying.  "He's  a  goner!" 


138  The  Lovely  Lady 

"And  that  lovely,  dusty,  brown  colour  that 
goes  so  well  with  her  hair!  Who  would  have 
thought  Peter  would  be  so  noticing." 

"It  couldn't  have  cost  him  a  cent  under 
seven  thousand."  Julian  was  certain,  "and 
carrying  it  off  with  me  the  way  he  did  —  bought 
the  six  cylinder  after  all,  he  had  ...  I'll 
bet  old  Peter  don't  know  a  cylinder  from  a 
stomach  pump." 

Clarice  was  evidently  going  on  with  her  own 
line  of  thought.  "It  will  be  the  best  thing 
that  ever  happened  to  Eunice  if  she  can  only 
be  got  to  see  it." 

"Well,  if  she  don't  her  mother  will  see  it  for 
her."  Lessing's  voice  died  into  a  subdued 
chuckle  as  Peter  passed  under  it  on  the  dew- 
damp  lawn,  but  there  was  no  revelation  in  it  for 
the  junior  partner.  He  had  already  found  out 
what  was  the  matter  with  him  and  what  he 
meant  to  do  about  it. 


Ill 


Whatever  the  process  of  becoming  engaged 
to  Eunice  Goodward  lacked  of  dramatic  interest, 


The  Lovely  Lady  139 

it  made  up  to  Peter  by  being  such  a  tremendous 
adventure  for  him  to  become  engaged  to  any 
body. 

He  had  gone  through  life  much  as  his  un 
friended  youth  had  strayed  through  the  city 
streets,  aching  for  the  walled-up  splendour  — 
all  the  world's  chivalries,  tendernesses,  passions 
-  known  to  him  only  by  glimmers  and  reflec 
tions  on  the  plain  glass  of  duty.  Now  at  a 
word  the  glass  dissolved  and  he  was  free  to 
wander  through  the  rooms  crammed  with  im 
perishable  poets'  wares.  He  walked  there  not 
only  as  one  who  has  the  price  to  buy,  but  him 
self  made  one  of  the  splendid  things  of  earth 
by  this  same  word  which  her  mere  being  pro 
nounced  to  him. 

He  paid  himself  for  years  of  denials  and 
repressions  by  the  discovery  of  being  able  to 
love  in  such  a  key.  For  he  meant  quite  simply 
to  marry  Eunice  Goodward  if  she  would  have 
him,  and  it  was  no  vanity  which  gave  him  hope, 
but  a  tribute  to  her  fineness  as  being  able  to 
see  herself  so  absolutely  the  one  thing  his  life 
waited  for.  He  knew  himself,  modestly,  no 
prize  for  her  except  as  he  was  added  to  by 


140  The  Lovely  Lady 

inestimable  passion.  Whatever  she  saw  in  him 
as  a  man,  for  her  not  to  recognize  the  immortal 
worth  of  what  he  was  able  to  become  under 
her  hand,  was  to  subtract  something  from  her 
perfections.  In  her  acceptance  would  lie  the 
Queen's  touch,  redeeming  him  from  all  com 
monness. 

He  made  his  first  venture  within  a  week  after 
their  first  meeting,  in  a  call  on  Miss  Goodward 
and  her  mother  in  Trethgarten  Square,  where 
he  found  their  red  brick,  vine-masked  front  dis 
tinguishable  among  half  a  hundred  others  by 
being  kept  open  as  late  as  the  middle  of  June. 
To  their  being  marooned  thus  in  a  desert  of 
boarded-up  doors  and  shuttered  windows,  due, 
as  Eunice  had  frankly  and  charmingly  let  him 
know,  to  their  being  poor  among  their  kind,  he 
doubtless  owed  it  that  no  other  callers  came  to 
disturb  the  languid  afternoon.  Seen  against 
her  proper  background  of  things  precious  but 
worn,  and  in  the  style  of  a  preceding  genera 
tion,  the  girl  showed  even  lovelier  than  before, 
with  the  rich,  perfumed  quality  of  a  flower  held 
in  a  chipped  porcelain  vase,  a  flower  moreover 
secure  in  its  own  perfectness,  waiting  only  to  be 


The  Lovely  Lady  141 

worn,  disdaining  alike  to  offer  or  resist.  Her 
very  quietness  —  she  left  him,  in  fact,  almost 
wholly  to  her  mother  —  had  the  air  of  condoning 
his  state,  of  understanding  what  he  was  there 
for  and  of  finding  it  somehow  an  accentuation 
of  the  interest  they  let  him  see  that  he  had  for 
them.  He  found  them,  mother  and  daughter, 
more  alike,  in  spite  of  their  natural  and  evident 
difference  of  years,  more  of  a  degree  than  he 
was  accustomed  to  find  mother  and  daughters 
in  the  few  houses  where  the  business  of  growing 
rich  had  admitted  him,  as  though  they  had 
been  carved  out  of  the  same  material,  by  the 
same  distinguished  artist,  at  different  times  in 
his  career. 

It  contributed  to  the  effect  of  his  having 
found,  not  by  accident,  but  by  seeking,  a  frame 
of  life  kept  waiting  for  him,  kept  warm  and  con 
scious.  Presently  Eunice  poured  tea  for  them, 
and  the  intimacy  of  her  remembering  as  she  did, 
how  he  took  it,  had  its  part  in  the  freedom  which 
he  presently  found  for  offering  hospitality  on 
his  own  account,  not  at  his  home,  as  he  ex 
plained  to  them,  his  sister  being  away,  but  say 
a  dinner  at  Briar  Crest  to  which  they  might 


142  The  Lovely  Lady 

motor  out  pleasantly  Saturday  afternoon,  re 
turning  by  moonlight.  He  offered  Briar  Crest 
tentatively  on  the  strength  of  the  Lessings 
having  once  given  a  dinner  there,  and  was  re 
lieved  to  find  that  he  had  made  no  mistake. 

"A  great  many  of  your  friends  go  there," 
Mrs.  Good  ward  allowed;  "the  Van  Stitarts, 
Eunice,  you  remember." 

"The  Gherberdings  are  there  now,  mamma; 
I'm  sure  we  shall  enjoy  it." 

Having  crossed  thus  at  one  fortunate  stroke 
the  frontiers  of  social  observance,  to  which 
Clarice  had  but  edged  her  way  in  the  right  of 
being  a  Thatcher  Inwood,  Peter  ventured  on 
Friday  to  suggest  by  telephone  that  since  din 
ner  must  be  late,  the  ladies  should  meet  him 
at  what  he  had  taken  pains  to  ascertain  was 
the  correct  one  of  huge  uptown  hotels,  for  tea 
before  starting.  It  was  Mrs.  Good  ward  who 
answered  him  and  she  whom  he  met  in  the 
white,  marble  tessellated  tea-room,  explain 
ing  that  Eunice  had  had  some  shopping  to 
do  —  they  were  really  leaving  on  Saturday  — 
and  Mr.  Weatheral  was  to  order  tea  without 
waiting.  They  had  time,  however,  for  the  tea 


The  Lovely  Lady  143 

to  be  drunk  and  for  Mrs.  Good  ward  to  become 
anxious  in  a  gentle,  ladylike  way,  before  it  oc 
curred  to  Peter  to  suggest  that  Miss  Goodward 
might  be  lurking  anywhere  in  the  potted  palm 
and  marble  pillared  labyrinth,  waiting  for  them, 
suffering  equal  anxieties,  and  dreadful  to  think 
of  in  their  present  replete  condition,  languishing 
for  tea.  His  proposal  to  go  and  look  for  her 
was  accepted  with  just  the  shade  of  deprecation 
which  admitted  him  to  an  amused  tolerance  of 
the  girl's  delinquencies,  as  if  somehow  Eunice 
wouldn't  have  dared  to  be  late  with  him  had 
she  not  had  reason  more  than  ordinary  for 
counting  on  his  indulgence. 

"You'll  find,"  Mrs.  Goodward  let  him  know, 
"that  we  require  a  deal  of  looking  after,  Eunice 
and  I." 

"Ah,  I  only  hope  you'll  find  that  I'm  equal  to 
it."  Peter  had  answered  her  with  so  little  in 
direction  that  it  drew  from  the  older  woman  a 
quick,  mute  flush  of  sympathy.  For  a  moment 
the  homeliness  of  his  lean  countenance  was 
relieved  with  so  redeeming  a  touch  of  what  all 
women  most  wish  for  in  all  men  that  she  met  it 
with  an  equal  simplicity.  "For  myself  I  am 


144  The  Lovely  Lady 

sure  of  it,"  but  lifted  next  moment  to  a  lighter 
key,  with  a  smile  very  like  her  daughter's 
dragged  a  little  awry  by  the  use  of  years, 
"as  for  Eunice,  you'll  first  have  to  lay  hands 
on  her." 

With  this  permission  he  rose  and  made  the 
circuit  of  the  semi-divided  rooms,  coming  out 
at  last  into  the  dim  rotunda,  forested  with 
clustered  porphyry  columns,  and  there  at  last 
he  caught  sight  of  her.  She  had  but  just 
stepped  into  its  shaded  coolness  out  of  the  hot, 
bright  day,  and  hung  for  a  moment,  in  the  act  of 
furling  her  parasol,  in  which  he  was  about  to 
hail  her,  until  he  discovered  by  his  stepping 
into  range  from  behind  one  of  the  green  pillars, 
that  she  was  also  in  the  act  of  saying  good-bye 
to  Burton  Henderson.  There  was  a  certain 
finality  in  the  way  she  held  out  her  hand  to  him 
which  checked  Peter  in  the  hospitable  impulse 
to  include  the  younger  man  in  the  afternoon's 
diversion.  He  stepped  back  the  moment  he 
saw  that  she  was  having  trouble  with  her  escort, 
defending  herself  by  her  manner  from  something 
accusing  in  his.  Not  to  seem  to  spy  upon  her, 
Weatheral  made  his  way  back  though  the  coat- 


The  Lovely  Lady  145 

room  without  disclosing  himself.  From  the 
door  of  it  he  timed  his  return  so  as  to  meet  her 
face  to  face  as  she  came  up  with  Mrs.  Good  ward 
and  was  rewarded  for  it  by  the  gayety  of  her 
greeting  and  the  unaffectedness  of  her  attack 
of  the  fresh  relay  of  toasted  muffins  and 
tea. 

"Absolutely  famished,"  she  told  them,  "and 
the  shops  are  so  fascinating!  You'd  forgive  me, 
Mr.  Weatheral,  if  you  could  see  the  heaps  and 
heaps  of  lovely  things  simply  begging  to  be 
bought;  it  seemed  positively  unkind  to  come 
away  and  leave  any  of  them."  As  she  said 
nothing  whatever  about  the  young  man,  it 
seemed  unlikely  that  she  could  have  him  much 
on  her  mind.  She  had  a  new  way,  very  charm 
ing  to  Peter,  of  surrendering  the  afternoon  into 
his  hands ;  let  him  ask  nothing  of  her  she  seemed 
to  say,  but  to  enjoy  herself.  She  built  out  of 
their  being  there  before  her,  a  very  delightful 
supposition  of  her  mother  and  Mr.  Weatheral, 
between  them  having  made  a  little  space  for 
her  to  be  gay  in  and  simple  and  lovely  after 
her  own  kind.  If  she  took  any  account  of  them 
it  was  such  as  a  dancer  might  who,  practising 


146  The  Lovely  Lady 

a  few  steps  for  the  mere  joy  and  pride  of  it, 
finds  herself  unexpectedly  surrounded  by  an 
interested  and  smiling  audience. 

If,  however,  with  the  memory  of  that  after 
noon  upon  him,  Peter  had  gone  down  to  Fairport 
in  the  latter  part  of  July  with  the  expectation 
of  resuming  the  part  of  impresario  to  her 
charm,  he  suffered  a  sharp  disappointment.  He 
found  the  Goodwards,  not  in  the  expensive 
caravansary  in  which  he  installed  himself,  but 
in  a  smaller  tributary  house  set  back  from  the 
mam  hotel  though  not  quite  disconnected  with 
it;  for  quiet,  Mrs.  Good  ward  told  him,  though 
he  guessed  quite  as  much  from  economy. 

"It's  wonderful,  really,  what  they  do  with  so 
little,"  Clarice,  with  her  fine  discriminations  in 
the  obligations  of  friendship,  had  generously 
let  him  know.  "Eunice  hasn't  anything,  posi 
tively  not  am/thing  in  comparison  with  what 
people  of  her  class  usually  have.  And  with 
her  taste,  you  know,  there  must  be  things  she's 
just  aching  for,  that  somehow  you  can't  give 
her."  You  couldn't,  indeed.  Though  Peter 
made  excuses  enough  for  giving  her  the  use  of  his 
car,  and  giving  it  to  her  shorn  even  of  the  im- 


The  Lovely  Lady  147 

plication  of  his  society,  there  were  few  occasions 
when  he  could  do  even  so  much  as  that.  He 
couldn't  even  give  her  his  appreciations. 

For  at  Fairport  the  Goodwards  were  quite 
in  the  heart  of  all  that  Peter  himself  failed  to 
understand  that  he  couldn't  possibly  be.  It 
was  not  that  he  wasn't  to  the  extent  at  least 
of  sundry  invitations  given  and  accepted,  "in" 
as  much  of  the  Best  Society  as  Fairport  af 
forded.  Mrs.  Goodward  saw  to  that,  and  there 
were  two  or  three  whom  he  had  met  at  the 
Lessings'  as  well  as  men  to  whom  the  figure  of 
his  income  was  the  cachet  of  eligibility.  It 
wasn't  indeed  that  he  wasn't  liked,  and  that 
quite  at  his  proper  worth,  but  that  he  couldn't 
somehow  manage  it  so  that  the  Best  Society 
cared  in  the  least  whether  he  liked  it.  He  could 
see,  in  a  way,  where  Clarice  had  been  at  work 
for  him;  but  the  poison  that  was  dropped  in  his 
cup  was  the  certainty  that  the  way  for  him 
had  to  be  "worked."  The  discovery  that  he 
couldn't  just  find  his  way  to  Eunice  Good- 
ward's  side  by  the  same  qualities  that  had 
placed  him  beside  the  males  of  her  circle  in 
point  of  property  and  power,  that  he  couldn't 


148  The  Lovely  Lady 

without  admission  to  that  circle,  properly  court 
her,  hemmed  him  in  bewilderingly. 

Her  method  of  eluding  him,  if  there  were 
method  in  it,  left  him  feeling  not  so  much 
avoided  as  prevented  by  the  moves  of  a  game  he 
hadn't  meant  to  play.  So  greatly  it  irked  his 
natural  simplicity  to  be  banded  about  by  the 
social  observances  of  the  place,  that  it  might 
have  led  him  to  irrecoverable  mistakes  had  it 
not  been  for  the  hand  held  out  to  him  by  Mrs. 
Good  ward. 

He  perceived  on  closer  acquaintance,  that  this 
lady's  fine  serenity  of  manner  was  due  largely 
to  her  never  admitting  to  her  mind  the  up 
setting  possibility.  She  thought  her  world  into 
acceptable  shape  and  held  it  there  by  the  simple 
process  of  ignoring  the  eccentricities  of  its  axis. 

Peter  would  have  admired,  if  his  unsophisti- 
cation  had  allowed  him,  the  facility  with  which 
she  made  it  revolve  now  about  their  mutual  pur 
suit  of  Eunice  through  the  rattle  and  cheapness 
of  what  was  known  as  "the  Burton  Henderson 
set."  As  it  was  against  just  such  social  incon 
sequence  that  Peter  felt  himself  strong  to 
defend  her,  he  fell  easily  into  the  key  of  credit- 


The  Lovely  Lady  149 

ing  the  girl's  sudden,  bewildering  flight  to  it  as 
a  mere  midsummer  madness. 

"It's  the  way  with  girls,  I  fancy,"  Mrs.  Good- 
ward  had  said  to  him,  strolling  up  and  down  the 
hotel  veranda  where  through  the  wide  French 
windows  they  had  glimpses  of  Eunice  whirling 
away  on  the  ice  polished  floor  of  the  ballroom 
within;  "they  cling  the  more  to  gayety  as  they 
see  the  graver  things  of  life  bearing  down  upon 
them." 

"You  think  she  sees  that?" 

"Ah,  there's  much  a  mother  sees,  Mr. 
Weatheral-  -" 

"You  would,  of  course,"  he  accepted. 

"It's  a  woman's  part,  seeing;  there's  an  in 
stinct  in  us  not  to  see  too  soon."  She  gave 
him  the  benefit  of  her  sweet  weighted  smile. 

Peter  lived  greatly  on  these  things.  He  was 
so  sure  of  himself,  of  the  reality  and  strength  of 
his  passion;  he  had  a  feeling  of  its  being  quite 
enough  for  them  to  go  on,  an  inexhaustible, 
fairy  capital  out  of  which  almost  anything  that 
Eunice  Good  ward  desired  might  be  drawn.  It 
was  fortunate  that  he  found  his  passion  so  self- 
sufficing,  for  there  was  little  enough  that  Eunice 


150  The  Lovely  Lady 

afforded  it  by  way  of  sustenance.  For  a  week 
he  no  more  than  kept  in  sight  of  her  in  the 
inevitable  summer  round;  he  did  not  dance  and 
the  game  of  cards  he  could  play  was  gauged  to 
what  Ellen  could  manage  in  an  occasional  quiet 
evening  at  the  Lessings'. 

"I  suppose,"  Eunice  had  said  to  him  on  an 
occasion  when  he  had  known  enough  to  decline 
an  invitation  for  an  afternoon's  play  to  which 
Burton  Henderson  was  carrying  her  away, 
"that  the  stakes  we  play  for  aren't  any  temp 
tation  to  you" 

"I  think  that  they're  out  of  proportion  to  the 
trouble  you  have  to  be  at  to  win  them." 

"Oh,  if  you  don't  care  for  the  game " 

"I  don't."  And  then  casting  about  for  a 
phrase  that  explained  him  more  happily, 
"Put  it  that  I  like  to  cut  out  my  job  and  go  to 
it. "  She  gave  him  a  quick,  condoning  flash  of 
laughter;  the  phrase  was  Lessing's  and  out  of 
her  recognition  of  it  he  drew,  loverlike,  that 
assurance  of  common  understanding  so  dear  to 
lovers.  "Put  it,"  he  ventured  further,  "that 
I  don't  like  to  see  myself  balked  of  the  prize 
by  the  way  the  cards  are  dealt." 


The  Lovely  Lady  151 

"Ah,  but  that's  what  makes  it  a  game.  I'd 
no  idea  you  were  such  a  —  revolutionist." 

"Evolutionist,"  he  corrected,  happy  in  hav 
ing  touched  the  subtler  note  behind  their  per 
siflage.  "I've  all  science  on  my  side  for  the 
most  direct  method."  After  all,  why  should 
he  let  even  the  Best  Society  deal  the  cards  for 
him?  Should  not  a  man  sweep  the  boards  of 
whatever  kept  him  from  his  natural  mate? 

That  was  on  Tuesday,  and  the  Thursday 
following  he  had  asked  the  Goodwards  to  motor 
over  to  Lighthouse  Reef  with  him.  He  did  not 
know  quite  what  he  meant  to  bring  about  on 
this  occasion;  he  had  so  much  the  feeling  of  its 
being  an  occasion,  the  invitation  had  been  so 
pointedly  given  and  accepted,  it  was  with  dif 
ficulty  he  adjusted  himself  to  the  discovery  on 
arriving  at  their  hotel  with  the  car,  that  Eunice 
had  gone  to  play  tennis  instead. 

"The  time  is  so  short,"  Mrs.  Good  ward 
apologized;  "she  felt  she  must  make  the  most  of 
it."  She  had  to  leave  it  there,  not  being  able 
to  make  a  game  of  tennis  in  the  hot  sun  seem 
more  of  a  diversion  than  the  steady  pacing  of  the 
luxurious  car  along  the  road  which  laced  the 


152  The  Lovely  Lady 

forest  to  the  singing  beaches.  She  had  to  let 
her  sidewise  smile  do  what  it  could  toward  mak 
ing  the  girl's  bald  evasion  of  her  engagement 
seem  the  mere  flutter  and  hesitancy  of  besieged 
femininity.  For  the  moment  she  was  as  much 
"outside"  so  far  as  her  daughter  was  concerned 
as  Peter  was  of  the  select  bright  circle  in  which 
she  moved. 

The  way  opened  before  them,  beautiful  in 
late  bloom  and  heavy  fern,  above  which  the  sea 
wind  kept  a  perpetual  movement  of  aliveness. 

"Eunice  will  miss  it,"  Mrs.  Goodward 
rallied;  "such  a  perfect  afternoon!"  She  gave 
him  the  oblique  smile  again,  weighted  this  time 
with  the  knowledge  of  all  that  Peter  hadn't 
been  able  or  hadn't  tried  to  keep  from  her. 
"It  isn't  easy,  is  it,"  she  went  on  addressing  her 
speech  to  whatever,  at  the  mention  of  her  daugh 
ter's  name,  hung  in  the  air  between  them,  "to 
stand  by  and  see  other  people's  great  moments 
hover  over  them.  One  would  like  so  to  lend  a 
hand.  And  one  is  sure  of  nothing  so  much  as 
that  if  they  are  really  to  be  big,  one  mustn't." 

"If  you  feel  that,"  Peter  snatched  at  en 
couragement,  "that  it  is  really  the  big  thing  for 


The  Lovely  Lady  153 

her  —  what  I'm  sure  you  can't  help  knowing 
what  I  mean  —  what  I  hope." 

"  What  7  feel  -  -?  After  all,  it's  her  feeling, 
my  dear  Mr.  Weatheral,  that  we  have  to  take 
into  account.  It  wouldn't  be  fair  for  me  to 
attempt  to  answer  to  you  for  that!" 

"And  of  course  if  I  can't  make  her  feel 
.  .  ."  He  did  not  trust  himself  to  a  con 
clusion. 

They  found,  however,  when  the  road  issued 
on  the  coast  opposite  the  great  bursting  bulks 
of  spray,  that  Eunice's  desertion  and  the  ex 
tenuation  of  it  to  which  they  had  lent  them 
selves,  had  put  them  out  of  the  mood  for  the 
high  wind  and  warring  surf  of  the  Reef.  Ac 
cordingly  they  turned  aside  at  Peter's  sug 
gestion  to  have  tea  at  a  little  country  inn  farther 
back  in  the  hills,  where  the  pound  of  the  sea  was 
reduced  to  a  soft,  organ-booming  bass  to  which 
the  shrill  note  of  the  needles  countered  in  perfect 
tune.  The  tea  garden,  the  favourite  port  of 
call  for  afternoon  drives  from  the  resorts  here 
abouts,  lay  back  of  the  hostelry  in  a  narrow, 
ferny  glen  from  which  springs  issued.  As  Peter 
led  the  way  up  its  rocky  stair,  they  could  hear 


154  The  Lovely  Lady 

the  light  laughter  of  a  party  just  rising  from 
one  of  the  round  rustic  tables.  The  group 
descending  poured  past  them  a  summer-coloured 
runnel  down  the  little  glen,  and  left  them  face  to 
face  with  Eunice,  who  had  lingered,  her  dress 
caught  on  a  point  of  the  rustic  chair. 

"Mamma  --  you!"  She  looked  trapped, 
accused,  though  sheer  astonishment  held  the 

others  dumb.  "We  finished  the  game " 

she  began  and  stopped  short;  after  all,  her 
manner  seemed  to  say,  why  shouldn't  she  have 
tea  there  with  her  friends?  She  made  as  if  to 
sweep  past  after  them  but  Mrs.  Goodward  never 
moved  from  the  narrow  path.  She  was  more 
embarrassed,  Peter  saw,  than  her  daughter,  and 
as  plainly  at  bay. 

"Now  that  we  are  here "  she  began  in 

her  turn. 

"Now  that  you  have  followed  me  here,"  the 
girl  rang  out,  "what  is  it  that  you  have  to  say  to 
me?"  She  was  white  and  a  bright  flame  spot 
showed  on  either  cheek. 

"I  —  oh,"  the  elder  woman  by  an  effort  drew 
the  remnant  of  the  grand  manner  about  her; 
"it  is  Mr.  Weatheral,  I  think,  who  might  have 


The  Lovely  Lady  155 

something  to  say."  She  caught  the  occasion 
as  it  were  on  the  wing.  Peter  heard  the  quick 
breath  behind  him  with  which  she  grasped  it. 
"Now  that  you  are  here,  however,  I'll  tell  your 
party  that  you  will  be  driving  home  with  us." 
She  gathered  up  her  draperies  and  was  gone 
down  the  path  she  had  come  before  either  of  the 
others  thought  to  stop  her.  Eunice  had  not 
made  a  move  to  do  so.  She  stood  clasping  the 
back  of  the  chair  from  which  she  had  freed  her 
dress,  and  looked  across  it  mutinously  at  Peter. 

"And  what,"  she  quivered,  "has  Mr.  Weath- 
eral  to  say  to  me?" 

"There  is  nothing,"  he  told  her,  "that  I 
would  say  to  you,  Miss  Goodward,  unless  you 
wished  to  hear  it."  His  magnanimity  shamed 
her  a  little. 

"I  broke  my  engagement  to  you,"  she  ad 
mitted,  "broke  it  to  come  here  with  —  the 
others.  I  haven't  any  excuse  to  offer  you." 

"And  when,"  Peter  demanded  of  her,  "have 
I  asked  any  other  excuse  of  you  for  anything 
that  you  chose  to  do  except  that  you  chose  it. 
There  was  something  I  wished  to  say  to  you,  that 
I  hoped  for  a  more  auspicious  occasion.  .  .  /' 


156  The  Lovely  Lady 

He  hurried  on  with  it  suddenly  as  a  thing  to  be 
got  over  with  at  all  hazards.  "It  was  to  say 
that  I  hoped  you  might  not  find  it  utterly  be 
yond  you  to  think  of  marrying  me."  He  saw 
her  sway  a  little,  holding  still  to  her  chair,  and 
moved  toward  her  a  step,  dizzy  himself  with  the 
sudden  onset  of  emotion.  "But  now  that  it  is 
said,  if  it  distresses  you  we  will  say  no  more  about 
it."  She  waved  him  back  for  a  moment  with 
out  altering  her  strained,  trapped  attitude. 

"Have  you  said  this  to  mamma?  And  has 
she  —  has  she  said  anything  to  you?  About 
me,  I  mean;  how  I  might  take  it,  or  anything?" 

"She  said  that  she  couldn't  answer  for  you; 
that  it  was  your  feeling  that  must  be  taken  into 
account.  She  put  me,  so  to  speak,  on  my  own 
feet  in  so  far  as  that  was  concerned."  He  waited 
for  her  answer  to  that,  and  none  coming, 
though  he  saw  that  she  grew  a  little  easier,  he 
went  on  presently.  "There  is,  however,  much 
that  I  feel  ought  to  be  said  about  my  feeling 
for  you,  what  it  means  to  me,  what  I  hoped 
She  stopped  him  with  a  gesture;  he 
could  see  her  lovely  manner  coming  back  to  her 
as  quiet  comes  to  the  surface  of  a  smitten  pool. 


The  Lovely  Lady  157 

"That  —  one  may  take  for  granted,  may  one 
not?  Since  you  have  asked  me,  that  the  feel 
ing  that  goes  to  it  is  all  I  have  a  right  to  ask?" 

"Quite,  quite,"  he  assured  her.  "It  may 
be,"  he  managed  to  smile  upon  her  here  for  the 
easing  of  her  sweet  discomposure,  "it  may  very 
easily  be  that  I  was  thinking  too  much  of  my 
pleasure  in  saying  it." 

"It  would,  then,  be  a  pleasure?"  She  had 
the  air  of  snatching  at  that  as  something  con 
crete,  graspable. 

"It  would,  and  it  wouldn't.  I  mean  if  you 
were  bothered  by  it.  You  could  take  every 
thing  for  granted,  everything." 

"Even,"  she  insisted,  "to  the  point  of  taking 
it  for  granted  that  you  would  take  things  for 
granted  from  me:  that  you  wouldn't  expect 
anything  —  any  expression,  anything  more  than 
just  accepting  you?" 

"Ah!"  he  cried,  the  wonder,  the  amazement 
of  success  breaking  upon  him.  "If  you  ac 
cepted  me  what  more  could  I  expect. "  He  had 
clasped  the  hand  which  she  held  out  to  check 
him  and  held  it  against  his  heart  firmly  that 
she  shouldn't  see  how  he  trembled. 


158  The  Lovely  Lady 

"I  haven't,  you  know,"  she  reminded  him, 
"but  if  I  was  sure  —  very  sure  that  you 
wouldn't  ask  any  more  of  me  than  thinking, 
I  ...  might  think  about  it."  She  was 
trembling  now,  though  her  hand  was  so  cold, 
and  suddenly  a  tear  gathered  and  dropped, 
splashing  her  fine  wrist. 

"Oh,  my  dear,  my  dear!"  he  cried,  moved 
more  than  he  had  thought  it  possible  to  be; 
"you  can  be  perfectly  sure  that  there  will  never 
be  anything  between  you  and  me  that  shall  not 
be  exactly  as  you  wish."  He  suited  his  action 
to  the  word,  kissing  the  wet  splash  and  letting 
her  go. 

"Why,  then,"  she  recovered  herself  with  the 
smile  that  was  now  strangely  like  her  mother's, 
sweeter  for  being  smiled  a  little  awry,  "the  best 
thing  you  can  do  is  to  find  poor  mamma  and 
let  us  give  her  a  cup  of  tea." 

IV 

"Peter,  have  you  any  idea  what  I  am  think 
ing  about?" 

"Not  in  the  least,  Ellen,"  which  was  not 


The  Lovely  Lady  159 

strictly  the  truth.  He  supposed  she  must  be 
thinking  naturally  of  the  news  he  had  told  her 
not  an  hour  since,  of  his  engagement  to  Eunice 
Good  ward.  It  lay  so  close  to  the  surface  of  his 
own  mind  at  all  times  that  the  slightest  stir  of 
conversation,  like  the  wind  above  a  secret  rose, 
seemed  always  about  to  disclose  it.  They  were 
sitting  on  the  porch  at  Bloombury  and  the 
pointed  swallows  pitched  and  darted  about  the 
eaves. 

"It  was  the  smell  of  the  dust  that  reminded 
me,"  said  Ellen,  "and  the  wild  rose  at  the  turn 
of  the  road;  you  can  smell  it  as  plain  as  plain 
when  the  air  lifts  a  little.  Do  you  remember  a 
picnic  that  we  were  invited  to  and  couldn't 
go?  It  was  on  account  of  being  poor  .  .  . 
and  I  was  just  finding  it  out.  I  found  out  a 
good  many  things  that  summer;  about  my 
always  going  to  be  lame  and  what  it  would 
mean  to  us.  It  was  dreadful  to  me  that 
I  couldn't  be  lame  just  by  myself,  but  I  had  to 
mix  up  you  and  mother  in  it." 

"We  were  glad,  Ellen,  to  be  mixed  up  in  it 
if  it  made  things  easier  for  you." 

"I   know     .     .     .    times   I   felt   that   way 


160  The  Lovely  Lady 

about  it  too,  but  that  was  when  I  was  older 
.  .  .  as  if  it  sort  of  held  us  all  together;  like 
somebody  who  had  belonged  to  us  all  and  had 
died.  Only  it  was  me  that  died,  the  me  that 
would  have  been  if  I  hadn't  been  lame.  .  .  . 
Well,  I  hadn't  thought  it  out  so  far  that  first 
summer;  I  just  hated  it  because  it  kept  us  from 
doing  things  like  other  people.  You  were  fond 
of  Ada  Brown,  I  remember,  and  it  was  because 
I  was  lame  and  we  were  so  poor  and  all,  that 
you  couldn't  go  with  her  and  she  got  engaged  to 
Jim  Harvey.  I  hope  you  don't  think  I  have  a 
bad  heart,  Peter,  but  I  was  always  glad  that 
Ada  didn't  turn  out  very  well.  Every  time  I 
saw  her  getting  homelier  and  kind  of  bedraggled 
like,  I  said  to  myself,  well,  I've  saved  Peter  from 
that  at  any  rate.  I  couldn't  have  borne  it  if 
she  had  turned  out  the  kind  of  a  person  you 
ought  to  have  married." 

"You  shouldn't  have  worried,  Ellen;  very 
few. men  marry  the  first  woman  they  are 
interested  in." 

"There  was  a  girl  you  used  to  write  home 
about  —  at  that  boarding-house.  I  used  to  get 
you  to  write.  I  daresay  you  thought  I  was 


The  Lovely  Lady  161 

just  curious.  But  I  was  trying  to  find  out 
something  that  would  make  me  perfectly  sure 
she  wasn't  good  enough  for  you.  She  was  a 
typewriter,  wasn't  she?" 

"Something  of  that  sort." 

"Well!"  Ellen  took  him  up  triumphantly, 
"you  wouldn't  have  wanted  to  be  married  to  a 
typewriter  now!" 

"I  never  really  thought  of  marrying  one,  Ellen. 
I'm  sure  everything  has  turned  out  for  the 
best." 

"That's  what  I'm  trying  to  tell  you.  You 
see  I  was  determined  it  should  turn  out  that 
way.  I  said,  what  was  the  use  of  being  lame 
and  being  a  burden  to  you  unless  there  was 
something  meant  by  it.  I'd  have  fretted  dread 
fully  if  I  hadn't  felt  that  there  was  something 
to  come  out  of  it.  And  it  has  come  .  .  . 
Peter,  you'd  rather  I'd  saved  you  for  this  than 
anything  that  might  have  happened?" 

"Much  rather,  Ellen." 

It  had  surprised  him  in  the  telling,  to  see  how 
accurately  his  sister  had  gauged  the  worldly 
advantage  of  his  marriage.  If  Eunice  Good- 
ward  had  been  a  piece  of  furniture,  Ellen 


162  The  Lovely  Lady 

couldn't  have  appraised  her  better  at  her  ob 
vious  worth :  beauty  and  character  and  family 
and  the  mysterious  cachet  of  society.  Clarice 
had  been  at  work  there,  too,  he  suspected.  Miss 
Goodward  fitted  in  Ellen's  mind's  eye  into  her 
brother's  life  and  fortune  as  a  picture  into  its 
frame. 

"I'm  very  glad  you  feel  that  way  about  it, 
Ellen"  he  said  again;  he  was  on  the  point  of 
telling  her  about  the  House  of  Shining  Walls. 
The  material  from  which  he  had  drawn  its 
earliest  furnishings  lay  all  about  them,  the 
receding  blue  of  the  summer  sky,  the  aged,  arch 
ing  apple  boughs.  The  scent  of  the  wilding 
rose  came  faintly  in  from  the  country  road  — 
suddenly  his  sister  surprised  him  with  a  flash  of 
rare  insight. 

"I  guess  there  can't  anything  keep  us  from 
the  best  except  ourselves,"  she  said.  "Being 
willing  to  put  up  with  the  second  best  gives  us 
more  trouble  than  the  Lord  ever  meant  for  us. 
Think  of  the  way  I've  always  wanted  children 
—  but  if  they'd  been  my  real  own,  they'd  have 
been  sickly,  likely,  or  even  lame  like  me,  or  just 
ordinary  like  the  only  kind  of  man  who  would 


The  Lovely  Lady  163 

have  married  me.  As  it  is,  I've  had  Clarice's 

and  now "  She  broke  off  with  a  quick, 

old-maidish  colour. 

Ellen  had  gone  so  far  as  to  name  all  of  Peter's 
children  in  the  days  when  nothing  seemed  so 
unlikely;  now  in  the  face  of  his  recent  engage 
ment  she  would  have  thought  it  indelicate. 

"She  would  have  liked  you  marrying  so  well, 
Peter,"  she  finished  with  a  backward  motion  of 
her  head  toward  the  room  where  the  parlour  set, 
banished  long  ago  from  the  town  house,  sym 
bolized  for  Ellen  the  brooding  maternal  presence. 

"  Yes,  she  would  have  liked  it."  There  came 
back  to  him  with  deep  satisfaction  his  mother's 
appraisement  of  young  Mrs.  Dassonville,  who 
must,  as  he  recalled  her,  have  been  shaped  by 
much  the  same  frame  of  life  as  Eunice  Good- 
ward  —  the  Lovely  Lady.  The  long  unused 
phrase  had  risen  unconsciously  to  his  lips  on  the 
day  that  he  had  brought  Eunice  her  ring.  He 
had  spent  a  whole  week  in  the  city  choosing  it; 
three  little  flawless,  oblong  emeralds  set  with 
diamonds,  almost  encircling  her  finger  with  the 
mystic  number  seven.  He  had  discovered  on 
the  day  that  she  had  accepted  him,  that  it  had 


164  The  Lovely  Lady 

to  be  emeralds  to  match  the  green  lights  that 
her  eyes  took  on  in  the  glen  from  the  deep  fern, 
the  mossy  bank  and  the  green  boughs  overhead. 
On  the  terrace  at  Lessings'  under  a  wide  June 
sky  he  had  supposed  them  to  be  blue;  but 
there  was  no  blue  stone  of  that  sky  colour  of 
sufficient  preciousness  for  Eunice  Goodward. 

She  had  been  very  sweet  about  the  ring, 
touched  with  grateful  surprise  for  its  beauty 
and  its  taste.  Something  he  could  see  of  relief, 
of  assurance,  flashed  and  fell  between  the  two 
women  as  she  showed  it  to  her  mother.  They 
had  taken  him  so  beautifully  on  trust,  they 
couldn't  have  known,  he  reflected,  whether  he 
would  rise  at  all  to  the  delicate,  balanced  obser 
vation  of  life  among  them;  it  was  evidence,  the 
emerald  circlet,  of  how  satisfyingly  he  had  risen. 
The  look  that  passed  between  mother  and 
daughter  was  like  a  spark  that  lighted  as  it  fell, 
an  unsuspected  need  of  him  as  man  merely,  the 
male  element,  security,  dependability,  care. 
His  first  response  to  it  was  that  of  a  swimmer 
who  has  struck  earth  under  him;  he  knew  in 
that  flash  where  he  was,  kby  what  familiar 
shores;  and  the  whole  effect,  in  spite  of  him  was 


The  Lovely  Lady  165 

of  the  sudden  shrinkage  of  that  lustrous  sea  in 
which  his  soul  and  sense  had  floated.  It 
steadied  him,  but  it  also  for  the  moment  nar 
rowed  a  little  the  horizon  of  adventure.  It  was 
the  occasion  that  Eunice  took  to  define  for 
him  his  status  as  an  engaged  man. 

He  kept  as  far  as  he  was  able  his  compact  of 
expecting  nothing  of  her,  except  of  course  that 
he  couldn't  avoid  expecting  that  their  arrange 
ment  would  lead  in  the  natural  course  to  mar 
riage.  She  had  met  him  more  than  halfway  in 
that,  agreeing  to  an  earlier  date  than  he  had 
thought  compatible  with  the  ritual  of  engage 
ments  in  the  Best  Society.  She  had  managed, 
however,  that  Peter  should  present  her  with  her 
summer  freedom :  the  engagement  was  not  even 
to  be  announced  until  their  return  to  town. 
And  in  the  meantime  Peter  was  to  find  a  house. 
He  had  offered  her  travel  for  that  first  year. 
Europe,  which  he  had  scarcely  glimpsed,  glit 
tered  and  allured.  But  travel,  Eunice  let  him 
know,  went  much  better  when  you  had  a  place 
to  come  back  to.  He  saw  at  once  how  right 
was  everything  she  did.  Well,  then,  a  house  on 
Fillmore  Avenue? 


166  The  Lovely  Lady 

"Oh  — shall  we  be  so  rich  as  that,  Peter?" 
He  divined  some  embarrassment  in  her  as  to 
the  scale  in  which  they  were  to  live.  "We'll 
want  something  in  the  country,  too,"  she  re 
minded  him. 

"  I've  a  couple  of  options  at  Maplemont " 

"  Oh,  Maplemont "  She  liked  that  also, 

he  perceived. 

"And  a  place  in  Florida.  Lessing  and  I 
bought  it  the  winter  the  children  had  the 
diphtheria.  They've  a  very  pretty  bungalow; 
we  could  put  up  something  like  it  for  ourselves 

—  if  you  wouldn't  mind  my  sister  occasionally. 
Ellen  isn't  happy  at  hotels." 

"Mind!  with  all  you're  giving  me!  You 
won't  think  it's  just  the  money,  Peter;"  she  had 
a  very  charming  hesitancy  about  it.  "It's  what 
money  stands  for,  beauty,  and  suitability  —  and 

—  everything."     He  was  very  tender  with  her. 
"It's  not  that  I  have  such  a  pile  of  it  either," 

he  assured  her,  "though  I  turn  over  a  great  deal 
in  the  course  of  a  year.  It's  easier  making 
money  than  people  think." 

"Easier  for  everybody?"  There  was  a 
certain  eagerness  in  the  look  and  voice. 


The  Lovely  Lady  167 

"  Easier  for  those  who  know  how.  I'm  only 
forty,  and  I've  learned;  there's  not  much  I 
couldn't  get  if  I  set  about  it.  It's  a  kind  of  a 
gift,  perhaps,  like  painting  or  music,  but  there's 
a  great  deal  to  be  learned,  too." 

"And  some  haven't  the  gift  to  learn,  per 
haps."  For  some  reason  she  sighed.     .     .     . 
He  was  turning  all  this  over  in  his  mind  when 
suddenly  Ellen  recalled  him. 

"Have  you  told  Clarice  yet?" 

"I  mean  to,  Sunday,  if  you  don't  mind  my 
not  coming  down  to  you.  Miss  Good  ward  is 
spending  the  week  end  at  Maplemont,  and  by 
staying  at  Julian's " 

"Of  course."  Ellen  sympathized.  "I  shall 
want  to  know  what  Clarice  says."  She  never 
did  know  exactly,  for  when  Clarice  gave  Peter 
her  congratulations  in  the  terrace  garden  after 
dinner,  she  missed,  extraordinarily  for  her,  the 
felicitous  note. 

"I'm  so  happy  for  Eunice,  you  can't  imagine," 
she  insisted.  "I've  always  said  we've  none  of 
us  known  what  Eunice  can  do  until  she's  had 
her  opportunity.  And  now  with  all  the  back 
ground  you  can  give  her You'll  see!" 


168  The  Lovely  Lady 

He  didn't  quite  know  what  he  was  to  see 
except  that  if  Eunice  were  to  be  in  the  pic 
ture  it  was  bound  to  be  satisfying.  But  Mrs. 
Lessing  was  not  done  with  him.  "For  all  her 
being  so  beautiful  and  so  well  placed'/she  went 
on,  "Eunice  has  never  had  any  life  at  all,  not 
what  you  might  call  a  life.  And  she  might  so 
easily  have  missed  this.  It  is  hard  for  girls  to 
realize  sometimes  that  the  success  of  marriage 
depends  on  real  qualities  in  the  man,  in  mastery 
over  things  and  not  just  over  her  susceptibili 
ties.  It  is  quite  the  most  sensible  thing  I've 
known  Eunice  to  do." 

"Only,"  Peter  reminded  her  for  his  part, 
"I'm  not  just  exactly  doing  it  because  it  is 
sensible."  Her  "of  course  not"  was  convinced 
enough  to  have  stilled  the  vague  ruffling  of  his 
mind,  without  doing  it.  He  didn't  object  to 
having  his  qualifications  as  Eunice  Good  ward's 
husband  taken  solidly,'but  why  dwell  upon  them 
when  it  was  just  the  particular  distinction  of  his 
engagement  that  it  had  the  intensity,  the 
spiritual  extension  which  was  supposed  to  put  it 
out  of  reach  of  material  considerations.  Even 
Ellen  had  done  better  by  him  than  this. 


The  Lovely  Lady  169 

He  was  forced,  however,  to  come  back  to  the 
substance  of  Mrs.  Lessing's  comment  a  few 
days  later  when  he  was  being  dined  at  the  club 
by  a  twice-removed  cousin  of  the  Goodward's, 
the  upright,  elderly  symbol  of  the  male  sanc 
tion  which  was  the  most  that  his  fiancee's 
fatherless  condition  could  furnish  forth.  The 
man  was  cordial  enough;  he  was  even  prepared 
to  find  Peter  likable;  but  even  more  on  that 
account  to  measure  his  relation  to  Miss 
Good  ward  in  terms  of  its  being  a  "good 
thing." 

"It's  not,  you  know,"  his  host  couldn't  fore 
bear  to  remind  him,  "exactly  the  sort  of  a  mar 
riage  we  expected  of  Eunice;  but  if  the  girl  is 
satisfied ' 

"If  I  hadn't  satisfied  myself  on  that 
point  —  Peter  reminded  him  in  his  turn. 

"Quite  so,  quite  so     ...     girls  have  no 
tions  sometimes ;  one  never  quite  knows     .     . 
You'll  keep  on  with  your  —  just  what  is  it  you 
do  such  tremendous  things  with;  one  hears  of 
course  that  you  do  do  them " 

"Real  estate,  brokerage,"  Peter  enlightened 
him.  "I  shall  certainly  keep  on  with  it. 


170  The  Lovely  Lady 

Isn't  one  supposed  to  have  all  the  more  need  of 
it  when  there's  an  establishment  to  keep  up?  " 

The  symbol  waved  a  deprecating  hand. 
"You'll  find  it  rather  an  occupation  to  keep  up 
with  Eunice,  I'm  thinking.  I've  a  notion 
she'll  go  it,  once  she  has  the  chance." 

"If  by  going  it,  you  mean  going  out  a  great 
deal,  seeing  the  world  and  having  it  in  to  see  her, 
well,  why  shouldn't  she,  so  long  as  I  have  the 
price?"  He  could  only  take  it  good-naturedly. 
It  was  amusing  when  you  came  to  think  of  it, 
that  a  man  who  would  contribute  to  the  sum  of 
his  wife's  future  perhaps,  the  price  of  a  silver 
tea  salver,  should  so  hold  him  to  account  for 
it.  Nevertheless  the  talk  left  a  faint  savour  of 
dryness.  It  was  part  of  his  new  pride  in  him 
self  as  a  possession  of  hers  that  he  should  in  all 
things  come  up  to  the  measure  of  men,  but  the 
one  thing  which  should  justify  his  being  so 
ticketed  and  set  aside  by  them  as  the  Provider, 
the  Footer-up  of  Accounts,  was  the  assurance 
which  only  she  could  give,  of  his  being  the  one 
thing,  good  or  bad,  which  could  be  made  to 
answer  for  her  happiness. 

Walking  home  by  the  river  to  avoid  as  far 


The  Lovely  Lady  171 

as  possible  the  baked,  oven-smelling  streets, 
he  was  aware  how  strangely  the  whole  earth 
ached  for  her.  He  was  here  walking,  as  he  had 
been  since  his  first  seeing  her,  at  the  core  of  a 
great  light  and  harmony,  and  walking  alone  in 
it.  If  just  loving  her  had  been  sufficient  occupa 
tion  for  his  brief  courtship,  for  the  present  it 
failed  him.  For  he  was  not  only  alone  but 
lonely.  He  saw  her  swept  aside  by  the  calcu 
lating  crowd  —  strange  that  Ellen  and  Clarice 
should  be  a  part  of  it  —  not  only  out  of  reach 
of  his  live  passion,  but  beyond  all  speech. 
Alone  in  his  room  he  felt  suddenly  faint  for  the 
want  of  her.  He  turned  off  the  light  with 
which  he  had  first  flooded  it,  for  the  flare  of  the 
street  came  feebly  in  through  the  summer  leaf 
age,  and  sat  sensing  the  need  of  her  as  a  thing  to 
be  handled  and  measured,  a  benumbing,  suf 
focating  presence.  As  he  sat,  a  sound  of  music 
floated  by,  and  a  thin  pencil  of  light  from  a 
pleasure  barge  on  the  river  flitted  from  window 
to  window,  travelling  the  gilt  line  of  a  picture- 
frame  and  the  dark  block  of  a  picture  that  hung 
over  his  bed.  And  as  it  touched  in  passing  the 
high  ramping  figure  of  a  knight  in  armour,  the 


172  The  Lovely  Lady 

old  magic  worked.  He  felt  himself  flung  as  it 
were  across  great  distances,  and  dizzy  with  the 
turn,  to  her  side.  He  was  there  to  maintain  in 
the  face  of  all  worldly  reckoning,  the  excluding, 
spiritual  quality  of  their  relation.  The  more 
his  engagement  to  Eunice  Goodward  failed  of 
being  the  usual,  the  expected  thing,  the  more 
authority  it  derived  for  its  supernal  sources. 
It  took  the  colour  of  true  romance  from  its 
unlikelihood.  Peter  turned  on  the  light,  and 
drawing  paper  to  him,  began  to  write. 

"Lovely  Lady,"  the  letter  began,  and  as  if  the 
words  had  been  an  incantation,  the  room  was  full 
and  palpitating  with  his  stored-up  dreams. 
They  came  waking  and  crowding  to  fill  out  the 
measure  of  his  unconsummated  passion,  and  they 
had  all  one  face  and  one  likeness.  Late,  late 
he  was  still  going  on  with  it.  ... 

"And  so,"  he  wrote,"!  have  come  to  the  part 
of  the  story  that  was  not  in  the  picture,  that  I 
never  knew.  The  dragon  is  slain  and  the 
knight  has  just  begun  to  understand  that  the 
Princess  for  whom  it  was  done  is  still  a  Princess; 
and  though  you  have  fought  and  bled  for  them, 
princesses  must  be  approached  humbly.  And 


The  Lovely  Lady  173 

he  did  not  know  in  the  least  how  to  go  about  it 
for  in  all  his  life  the  knight  could  never  have 
spoken  to  one  before.  You  have  to  think  of  that 
when  you  think  of  him  at  all,  and  of  how  he 
must  stand  even  with  his  heart  at  her  feet, 
hardly  daring  to  so  much  as  call  her  attention 
to  it.  For  though  he  knows  very  well  that 
it  is  quite  enough  to  hope  for  and  more  than  he 
deserves,  to  be  able  to  spend  his  whole  life  serv 
ing  her,  love,  great  love  such  as  one  may  have 
for  princesses,  aches,  aches,  my  dear,  and  needs 
a  comforting  touch  sometimes  and  a  word  of 
recognition  to  make  it  beat  more  steadily  and 
more  serviceably  for  every  day." 

He  went  out  that  night  to  post  his  letter 
when  it  was  done,  for  though  there  was  not  time 
for  an  answer  to  it,  he  was  going  down  to  her  on 
Saturday,  he  liked  to  think  of  it  running  before 
him  as  a  torch  to  light  the  way  which,  even  while 
he  slept,  he  was  so  happily  traversing.  He  was 
quite  trembling  with  the  journey  he  had  come, 
when  on  Saturday  she  met  him,  floating  in  sum 
mer  draperies  and  holding  out  a  slim  ringed 
hand,  and  a  cool  cheek  to  glance  past  his  lips 
like  a  swallow. 


174  The  Lovely  Lady 

"You  had  my  letter,  dear?" 

"Such  a  lovely  letter,  Peter,  I  couldn't  think 
of  trying  to  answer  it." 

"Oh,  it  wasn't  to  be  answered  —  at  least 
not  by  another  -  He  released  her  lest 

she  should  be  troubled  by  his  trembling. 

"I  should  think  not!"  She  was  more  than 
gracious  to  him.  "It's  a  wonder  to  me,  Peter, 
you  never  thought  of  writing.  You  have  such 
a  beautiful  vocabulary."  But  even  that  did  not 
daunt  him,  for  he  knew  as  soon  as  he  had  looked 
on  her  again,  that  loving  Eunice  Goodward  was 
enough  of  an  occupation. 


The  senior  partner  of  Weatheral,  Lessing  & 
Co.,  was  exactly  the  sort  of  man,  when  his  phy 
sicians  ordered  him  abroad  for  two  years,  with 
the  intimation  that  there  might  even  worse 
happen  to  him,  to  make  so  little  fuss  about  it 
that  he  got  four  inches  of  type  in  a  leading  paper 
the  morning  of  his  departure  and  very  little 
more.  Lessing  would  certainly  have  been  at 
the  steamer  to  see  him  off,  except  for  being  so 


The  Lovely  Lady  175 

much  taken  up  with  adjustments  of  the  business 
made  necessary  by  Peter's  going  out  of  it;  and 
his  sister  Ellen  never  went  out  in  foggy  weather, 
seldom  so  far  from  the  house  in  any  case.  Be 
sides,  she  declared  that  if  she  once  saw  Peter 
disappearing  down  the  widening  water  she 
should  never  be  able  to  rid  herself  of  the  notion  of 
his  being  quite  overwhelmed  by  it,  whereas  if 
he  sent  on  his  trunks  the  day  before,  and 
walked  quietly  out  in  the  morning  with  his  suit 
case,  she  could  persuade  herself  that  he  had 
merely  run  down  to  Bloombury  for  a  few  days 
and  would  be  back  on  Monday.  And  having 
managed  his  leave-taking  as  he  did  most  per 
sonal  matters,  to  please  Ellen,  who  though  she 
had  never  been  credited  with  an  imagination, 
seemed  likely  to  develop  one  in  the  exigencies 
of  getting  along  without  Peter,  he  had  no  sense 
of  having  done  anything  other  than  to  please 
himself.  He  found  a  man  to  carry  his  suitcase 
as  soon  as  he  was  out  of  the  house,  and  walked 
the  whole  way  to  the  steamer;  for  if  one  has 
been  ordered  out  of  all  activity  there  is  still  a 
certain  satisfaction  in  going  out  on  your  own 
feet. 


176  The  Lovely  Lady 

It  was  an  extremely  ill-considered  day,  wet 
fog  drawn  up  to  the  high  shouldering  roofs  and 
shrugged  off,  like  a  nervous  woman's  shawl. 
But  whether  it  sulked  over  his  departure  or 
smiled  on  him  for  remembrance,  would  not 
have  made  any  difference  to  Peter,  who,  what 
ever  the  papers  said  of  the  reason  for  his  going 
abroad,  knew  that  there  would  be  neither  shade 
nor  shine  for  him,  nor  principalities  nor  powers 
until  he  had  found  again  the  House  of  the  Shin 
ing  Walls.  As  soon  as  he  had  bestowed  his 
belongings  in  his  stateroom,  he  went  out  on  the 
side  of  the  deck  farthest  from  the  groups  of 
leave-taking,  and  stood  staring  down,  as  if  he 
considered  whether  the  straightest  route  might 
not  lie  in  that  direction,  into  the  greasy,  shallow 
hollows  of  the  harbour  water,  at  the  very 
moment  when  the  Burton  Hendersons,  over 
their  very  late  coffee,  had  discovered  the  item 
of  his  departure. 

Mrs.  Henderson  balanced  her  spoon  on  the 
edge  of  her  cup  while  her  husband  read  the 
paragraph  aloud  to  her. 

"You  don't  suppose,"  she  said,  as  if  it  might 
be  an  interesting  even  if  regrettable  possi- 


The  Lovely  Lady  177 

bility,  "that  I — that  our  affair  —  had  any 
thing  to  do  with  it?" 

"If  it  did,"  admitted  her  husband,  with  the 
air  of  not  thinking  it  likely,  but  probably  served 
him  right,  "it  has  taken  a  long  time  to  get  at 
him.  Two  years,  isn't  it,  since  you  threw  him 
over  for  a  better  man?" 

"Oh,  I'm  not  so  sure  of  your  being  a  better 
man,  Bertie;  I  liked  you  better " 

Mr.  Burton  Henderson  accepted  his  wife's 
amendment  with  complacency. 

"I  don't  believe  Weatheral  appreciated  the 
distinction.  Men  like  that  have  a  sort  of 
money  crust  that  prevents  the  ordinary  per 
ceptions  from  getting  through  to  them."  This 
illustration  appeared  on  second  thoughts  so 
illuminating  that  it  carried  him  a  little  further. 
"Perhaps  that's  the  reason  it  has  taken  him 
so  long  to  tumble  after  he  has  been  hit;  it  has 
just  got  through  to  him.  It  would  be  interest 
ing  to  know,  though,  if  he  is  still  a  little  in  love 
with  you." 

There  was  a  fair  amount  of  speculation  in  Mr. 
Burton  Henderson's  tone  that  did  not  appear 
to  have  its  seat  in  any  apprehension. 


178  The  Lovely  Lady 

"Just  as  if  you  rather  hoped  it,"  his  wife 
protested. 

"Well,  I  was  only  wondering  if  his  health  is 
so  bad  as  the  papers  say  —  it  seldom  is,  you 
know  —  but  if  he  were  to  go  off  all  of  a  sudden 
one  of  these  days,  whether  he  mightn't  take  it 
into  his  head  now  to  leave  you  a  legacy." 

"I  don't  believe  it  was  personal  enough  with 
Peter  for  that.  It  wasn't  me  he  wanted  so 
much  as  just  to  be  married.  And,  besides,  I 
did  come  down  on  him  rather  hard."  Mrs. 
Burton  Henderson  smiled  a  little  reminiscent! y 
as  if  she  still  saw  herself  in  the  process  of  coming 
down  on  Peter  and  thought  rather  well  of  it. 

"Well,  anyway,"  her  husband  finished,  "we 
could  have  managed  with  a  legacy." 

"Yes,  we  do  need  money  dreadfully,  don't 
we,  Bertie?"  she  sighed.  "But  I  don't  believe 
I  had  anything  to  do  with  it." 

That  was  all  very  well  for  Mrs.  Burton  Hen 
derson,  but  Peter's  sister  Ellen  had  a  different 
opinion.  "Peter,"  she  had  said  the  evening 
after  Peter  had  sent  his  trunk  out  of  the  house 
and  locked  up  his  suitcase  to  keep  her  from 
putting  anything  more  into  it,  "you're  not 


The  Lovely  Lady  179 

thinking  of  her,  are  you?  You're  not  going  to 
take  that  abroad  with  you." 

"No,  Ellen,  I  haven't  thought  of  her  for  a 
long  time  except  to  wish  her  happiness.  You 
mustn't  let  that  worry  you." 

"Just  the  same,"  said  Ellen,  "if  anything 
happens  to  you  over  there  —  if  you  never  come 
back  to  me,  I  shall  never  forgive  her." 

"I  shall  come  back.  I  am  sorry  you  should 
feel  so  bitter  about  it." 

He  could  not,  especially  now  that  it  was  gone, 
very  well  explain  to  Ellen  about  the  House;  for 
all  the  years  that  it  had  stood  there  just  beyond 
the  edge  of  dreams  with  the  garden  spread 
around  it  and  a  lovely  wood  before,  she  had 
never  heard  of  it.  There  had  been  so  many 
ways  to  it  once,  paths  to  it  began  in  pictures, 
great  towered  gates  of  music  gave  upon  its 
avenues,  and  if  he  had  not  spoken  of  it,  it  was 
because  as  he  had  made  himself  believe  when 
she  did  come,  that  Eunice  Goodward  would 
come  into  it  of  first  right.  He  could  not  have 
blamed  her  for  not  wishing  to  live  in  it  —  from 
the  first  he  had  never  blamed  her.  He  might 
have  managed  even  had  she  pulled  it  about  his 


180  The  Lovely  Lady 

ears  to  rebuild  it  in  some  fashion,  but  this  was 
the  bitterest,  that  he  knew  now  for  a  certainty 
there  had  never  been  any  House  and  the  cer 
tainty  made  him  ridiculous. 

It  had  been  rather  the  worse  that,  with  all 
the  suddenness  of  this  discovery,  he  had  not 
been  able  to  avoid  the  habit  of  setting  out  for 
it,  seeking  in  dreams  the  relief  of  desolation  in 
knowing  that  no  dreams  could  come.  As  often 
as  he  heard  music  or  saw  in  the  soft  turn  of  a 
cheek  or  the  slender  line  of  a  wrist,  what  had 
moved  him  so  in  hers  he  felt  himself  urged  for 
ward  on  old  trails,  only  to  be  scared  from  them 
by  the  apparition  of  himself  as  Eunice  had 
evoked  it  from  her  bright  surpassing  surfaces, 
as  a  man  unaccomplished  in  passion,  unpro vo 
cative.  All  the  gates  to  the  House  opened  upon 
dreadful  hollows  of  self-despising  into  which 
Peter  fell  and  floundered,  so  that  he  took  to  go 
ing  that  way  as  little  as  possible,  taking  wide  cir 
cuits  about  it  continually  in  the  way  of  business, 
being  rather  pleased  with  himself  when  at  the 
end  of  two  years  he  could  no  longer  feel  any  pang 
of  loss  nor  any  remembering  thrill  of  what  the 
House  had  been  —  until  he  discovered  that  also 


The  Lovely  Lady  181 

he  could  not  feel  some  other  things,  the  pen  be 
tween  his  fingers  and  the  rise  of  the  stairs  under 
him.  He  forgot  Eunice  Good  ward,  and  then 
one  day  he  forgot  to  go  home  after  office  hours, 
and  they  found  him  sitting  still  at  his  desk  in 
the  dark,  trying  to  remember  whether  he  ought 
to  put  down  the  blotting-pad  and  the  paper 
weight  on  top  of  that,  or  if,  on  the  whole,  it 
were  not  better  to  put  the  paper  weight,  as 
being  the  heavier  article,  first. 

It  was  after  that  the  doctor  told  him  to  go 
as  far  away  from  his  business  as  possible  and 
keep  on  staying  away. 

"But  if  I  am  going  to  die,  doctor,"  Peter 
carefully  explained,  "I  would  much  rather  do 
it  in  my  own  country." 

"Ah,"  the  doctor  warned  him,  "that's  just 
the  difficulty.  You  won't  die." 

And  that  was  how  Peter  happened  to  be 
leaning  over  the  forward  rail  of  an  Atlantic 
steamer  on  his  way  to  Italy,  which  he  had 
chosen  because  the  date  of  sailing  happened  to 
be  convenient.  But  he  knew,  as  he  stood  looking 
down  at  the  surface  of  the  water,  rough-hewn 
by  the  wind,  that  whatever  the  doctor  said  to 


182  The  Lovely  Lady 

Lessing,  or  Ellen  surmised,  he  would  get  no 
good  there  except  as  it  showed  him  the  way  to 
the  House  of  the  Shining  Walls. 

He  did  not  remember  where  in  the  blind 
pointless  ring  through  which  the  steamer 
chugged  and  wallowed  as  though  it  were  a  su 
perior  sort  of  water  beetle  and  the  horizon  a  circle 
of  its  own  making,  he  began  to  get  sufficiently 
acquainted  with  his  fellow  passengers,  to  under 
stand  that  they  were  most  of  them  going 
abroad  in  the  interest  of  unrealized  estates,  and 
abounded  in  confidence.  To  see  them  forever 
forward  and  agaze  at  the  lit  shores  of  Spain  and 
the  Islands  of  Desire,  roused  in  him  the  faint 
savour  of  expectation.  Which,  however,  did  not 
prevent  him  from  finding  Naples  squalid,  and 
Rome,  where  he  arrived  in  the  middle  of  the 
tourist  season,  too  modern  in  a  cheap,  second- 
rate  sort  of  way.  He  could  remember  when 
Rome  had  furnished  some  excellent  company  for 
the  House,  and  suffered  in  the  places  of  renown 
an  indeterminable  pang  like  the  ache  of  an 
amputated  stump.  It  seemed,  on  occasion,  as 
if  the  old  trails  might  lie  down  the  hollow  of  the 
Forum,  under  the  arch  of  that  broken  aqueduct, 


The  Lovely  Lady  183 

beside  the  dark  Volsinian  mere;  but  when  Peter 
arrived  at  any  of  these  places  he  found  them 
prepossessed  by  Germans  gabbling  out  of 
Baedekers.  The  Sistine  Chapel  made  the  back 
of  his  neck  ache  and  he  came  no  nearer  than 
seven  tourists  to  the  noble  quietude  of  the  Vati 
can  marbles. 

"I  must  remember,"  said  Peter  to  himself, 
"that  I  am  a  very  sick  man,  and  crowds  annoy 


me." 


Then  he  went  into  the  country  and  saw  the 
gray  of  the  olives  above  the  springing  grass,  like 
the  silver  bloom  on  a  green  plum,  and  began  to 
experience  the  pangs  of  recovery.  He  found 
Hadrian's  Villa  and  the  garden  of  the  Villa 
d'Este,  and  remembered  other  things.  He 
remembered  the  flat  malachite -coloured  pools, 
the  definite,  pointed  cypresses  and  the  foun 
tain  's  soft  incessant  rain  —  as  it  had  been  in 
the  House.  As  it  was  in  the  House.  For  he 
understood  in  Italy  what  was  still  the  most 
bitter  to  know,  that  though  it  might  yet  be 
somewhere  in  the  world,  he  was  never  to  find  it 
any  more.  Toward  all  that  once  had  led  him 
thither,  his  sense  was  locked  and  sealed.  He 


184  The  Lovely  Lady 

remembered  Eunice  Goodward  —  the  fact  of 
her — how  tall  she  was  as  she  walked  beside  him 
-  but  not  how  at  the  soft  brushing  of  her  hair 
as  she  turned,  his  blood  had  sung  to  her;  nor 
all  the  weeks  of  their  engagement  like  a  morning 
full  of  wings.  And  he  could  not  yet  recall  so 
much  as  the  bare  reasons  for  her  break  with  him 
except  that  they  had  been  unhappy  ones. 

It  had  been  a  part  of  a  long  plan  that  he  and 
Eunice  should  have  seen  Italy  together,  but 
for  the  moment  he  did  not  wish  her  there.  He 
was  sure  she  would  have  been  in  the  way  of  his 
getting  something  that  glimmered  at  him  from 
the  coign  of  castellated  walls  all  awash  about 
their  base  with  purpled  shadow,  that  strove  to 
say  itself  in  intricate  fine  tracery  of  tower  and 
shrine,  and  failed  and  fell  away  before  the  sod 
den  quality  of  his  mind. 

So  he  drifted  northward  with  the  spring,  and 
saw  the  anemones  blowing  and  the  bloomy 
violet  wonder  the  world,  suffering  incredible 
aching  intimations  of  the  recrudescence  of  desire. 
Afterward  he  came  to  Florence,  where  he  had 
heard  there  were  pictures,  and  hoped  to  have 
some  peace;  but  at  Florence  they  were  all  too 


The  Lovely  Lady  185 

busy  being  painted  or  prayed  to,  the  remote 
Madonnas,  the  wounded  Saints,  the  comfort 
able  plump  Venuses;  the  lean  Christs  too  stupe 
fied  with  candle  smoke  to  take  any  account  of 
an  American  gentleman  in  a  plain  business  suit, 
who  looked  homely  and  ill  and  competent. 
Sometimes  in  Santa  Croce  or  in  the  long  gal 
lery  over  the  bridge,  the  noise  of  the  city  would 
remove  from  him  and  the  faces  would  waver  and 
lean  out  of  their  frames,  as  if,  had  the  occasion 
allowed,  they  would  have  said  the  word  to  set 
him  on  his  way.  But  there  was  always  a  guard 
about  or  a  tourist  stalking  some  uncatalogued 
prey  and  it  never  came  to  anything. 

"What  you  really  want,"  said  a  man  at  his 
hotel  to  whom  he  had  half  whimsically  com 
plained  of  their  inarticulateness  —  one  of  those 
remarkable  individuals  who  had  done  nothing 
so  successfully  in  so  many  cities  of  Europe  that 
he  was  supposed  to  know  the  exact  month  for 
doing  it  most  delightfully  in  any  one  of  them — 
"what  you  really  want  is  Venice.  It's  an  off 
season  there;  you'll  meet  nobody  but  Germans, 
and  if  you  go  about  in  your  own  gondola  you 
needn't  mind  them." 


186  The  Lovely  Lady 

So  Peter  went  to  Venice,  and  on  the  way  there 
he  met  the  Girl  from  Home. 


VI 


He  knew  at  once  that  she  was  from  Home, 
though  as  she  sat  opposite  him  with  the  fingers 
of  her  mended  gloves  laced  under  her  chin  and 
her  face  turned  away  to  miss  no  point  of  the 
cypresses  and  warm,  illumined  walls,  there  was 
nothing  to  prove  that  any  one  of  a  hundred 
towns  might  not  have  produced  her.  Peter  re 
membered  what  sort  of  people  wore  gloves  like 
that  in  Bloombury  —  the  minister's  wife,  the 
school  teacher,  his  mother  and  Ellen  —  and  was 
instantly  sure  she  would  not  have  been  travelling 
through  Italy  first-class  except  at  the  instigation 
of  the  large,  widowed  and  distrustful  woman 
with  whom  she  got  on  at  Padua.  This  lady, 
also,  Peter  understood  very  well.  He  thought  it 
likely  she  sat  in  rocking  chairs  a  great  deal  at 
home  and  travelled  to  improve  her  mind.  She 
had,  moreover,  a  general  air  of  proclaiming  the 
unwarrantableness  of  railway  acquaintances, 
which  alone  would  have  prevented  Peter  from 


The  Lovely  Lady  187 

asking  the  girl,  as  he  absurdly  wanted  to,  if 
they  had  painted  the  new  school-house  yet,  and 
if  there  had  been  much  water  that  year  in 
Miller's  pond. 

As  she  sat  so  with  her  round  hat  pushed  askew 
by  the  window-glass,  there  was  some  delicate 
reminder  about  her  that  streaked  the  rich 
Italian  landscape  with  vestiges  of  Bloom- 
bury. 

He  looked  out  of  the  window  where  she 
looked  and  saw  the  white  straight-sided  villas 
change  to  green-shuttered  farmhouses,  and  fine 
old  Roman  roads  lead  on  to  Harmony.  It  was 
all  there  for  him  in  its  unexpectedness,  as 
freshly  touching  as  those  reminders  of  his  mother 
which  he  came  upon  occasionally  where  Ellen 
kept  them  laid  by  in  lavender;  as  if  the  girl 
had  shaken  from  the  folds  of  her  jacket  of 
unmistakable  Bloombury  cut,  Youth  for  him 
—  his  own  —  anybody's  Youth  —  no  limp  and 
yellowed  keepsake,  but  all  crisply  done  up  and 
ready  for  putting  on.  So  sharp  for  the  moment 
was  his  sense  of  accepting  the  invitation  to  put 
it  on  with  her  as  the  best  possible  traveller's 
guise,  especially  for  seeing  Venice  in,  that  catch- 


188  The  Lovely  Lady 

ing  the  speculative  eye  of  the  large  lady  turned 
upon  him,  he  quailed  sensibly.  She  had  the  air 
of  having  detected  him  in  an  attempt  to  es 
tablish  a  relation  with  her  companion  on  the 
ground  of  their  common  youngness,  and  find 
ing  herself  much  more  a  match  for  him  both 
in  years  and  in  respect  to  their  common 
origin.  Whatever  passed  between  the  two 
women,  and  something  did  pass  wordlessly, 
with  hardly  so  much  substance  as  a  look,  re 
mained  there,  not  intrusively,  but  as  proof  that 
what  he  had  been  seeking  was  still  going  on  in 
some  far  but  attainable  place.  It  was  the  first 
movement  of  an  accomplished  recovery,  for  Peter 
to  find  himself  resisting  the  implication  of  his  ap 
pearance  in  favour  of  what  was  coming  to  him 
out  of  the  retouched,  sensitive  surfaces  of  his 
past. 

He  knew  so  well  as  he  looked  at  the  girl,  what 
had  produced  her.  She  was  leaning  a  little 
from  the  window  in  a  way  that  brought 
more  of  her  face  into  view,  and  though  from 
where  he  sat  Peter  could  have  very  little  notion 
of  the  points  of  the  nearing  landscape,  he  knew 
by  what  he  saw  of  her,  that  somewhere  across 


The  Lovely  Lady  189 

the  low  runnels  in  the  windy  reeds  she  had 
caught  sight  of  the  "sea  birds'  nest." 

He  did  not  on  that  account  change  his  posi 
tion  so  that  he  might  have  a  glimpse  of  the 
dark  hills  of  Arqua  or  the  towers  of  Venice 
repeating  themselves  in  the  lustrous,  spacious 
sea.  Sitting  opposite  the  girl,  he  saw  in  her 
following  eyes  the  silver  trails  of  water  and  the 
dim  procession  down  them  of  old  loves,  old 
wars,  old  splendours,  much  better  than  the  thin 
line  of  the  landscape  presented  them  to  his 
weary  sense.  He  leaned  back  as  far  as  the  stiff 
seat  allowed,  watching  the  Old  World  shine  on 
her  face,  where  the  low  light,  striking  obliquely 
on  the  water,  turned  it  white  above  black  shoals 
of  weed.  For  the  first  time  since  his  illness  his 
mind  slipped  the  leash  of  maimed  desire,  and 
as  if  it  parted  for  him  there  beyond  the  win 
dow  of  the  railway  carriage,  struck  into  the  trail 
to  the  House.  The  walls  of  it  rose  up  straight 
and  shining,  gilded  purely;  the  windows  arch 
ing  to  summer  blueness,  let  in  with  them  the 
smell  of  the  wilding  rose  at  the  turn  of  the  road 
and  the  evening  clamour  of  the  birds  in 
Bloombury  wood. 


190  The  Lovely  Lady 

All  this  time  Peter  had  been  sitting  in  an 
Italian  railway  carriage,  knee  to  knee  with  a 
pirate  bearded  Austrian  Jew  who  gave  him  the 
greatest  possible  occasion  for  wishing  the  win 
dow  opened,  and  when  the  jar  of  the  checked 
train  drew  him  into  consciousness  again,  he 
was  at  a  loss  to  know  what  had  set  him  off 
so  far  until  he  caught  sight  of  the  girl.  She  was 
buttoning  on  her  jacket  with  fingers  that  trem 
bled  with  excitement  as  she  constrained  herself 
to  the  recapitulation  of  the  two  suitcases,  the 
hat  box  and  three  parcels  which  her  companion 
in  order  to  have  well  in  hand,  had  been  alter 
nately  picking  up  and  dropping  ever  since  they 
sighted  the  tower  of  San  Georgio  dark  against 
the  sea  streaked  west. 

"Two  and  one  is  three  and  three  is  six  and 
the  'Baedeker*  and  the  umbrellas,"  said  the 
girl.  "No,  I  don't  have  to  look  in  the  address 
book.  I  have  it  by  heart.  Casa  Frolli,  the 
Zattera."  Then  the  roar  of  the  train  split  into 
the  sharp  cries  of  the  facchinos  that  carried 
them  forward  like  an  explosion  into  Venice 
as  it  rose  statelily  from  the  rippling  lustre. 
Around  it  wove  the  black  riders  with  still, 


The  Lovely  Lady  191 

communicating  prows,  so  buoyant,  so  mys 
teriously  alive  and  peering,  like  some  superior 
sea  creatures  risen  magically  from  below  the 
frayed  reflection  of  the  station  lights.  Much 
as  Peter  felt  that  he  owed  to  the  vivid  presence 
of  the  girl,  his  new  capacity  to  see  and  feel  it  so 
as  it  burst  upon  them,  he  hadn't  found  the 
courage  to  address  her.  So  it  was  with  a  dis 
tinct  sense  of  deprivation  that  he  saw  her  with 
her  companion  grasping  the  side  of  the  gondola 
as  if  by  that  method  to  keep  it  afloat,  disappear 
ing  down  the  dim  water  lanes  in  the  direction  of 
the  Zattera. 


VII 


It  was  the  evidence  of  how  far  he  had  come 
on  the  road  to  recovery  that  he  was  able,  when 
he  woke  in  his  bed  at  the  Britania,  to  allow  full 
play  to  the  suggestion  that  he  had  experienced 
nothing  more  than  the  natural  reversion  of  age 
to  the  bright  vividness  of  the  past.  "Though 
I  didn't  expect,"  he  admitted  as  he  lay  fronting 
in  the  wide  old  mirrors,  interminable  reflec 
tions  of  a  pillow  dinted  by  his  too-early  whit- 


192  The  Lovely  Lady 

ened  head,  "I  really  did  not  expect  to  have  it- 
begin  at  forty-two."  Having  made  this  con 
cession  to  his  acceptance  of  himself  as  a  man 
done  with  youngness  of  any  sort,  he  lay  listen 
ing  to  the  lip-lapping  of  the  water  and  the 
sounds  that  came  up  from  the  garden  just  below 
him,  the  clink  of  cups  and  the  women's  easy 
laughter,  and  wondered  what  it  could  have  been 
about  that  girl  to  set  him  dreaming  of  all  the 
women  who  had  ever  interested  him. 

It  did  not  occur  to  him  then,  nor  in  the  inter 
val  in  which  the  tang  of  his  dream  intervened 
between  him  and  the  full  flavour  of  Venice, 
that  he  had  not  thought  once  of  Eunice  Good- 
ward,  but  only  of  those  who  had  touched  his 
life  without  hurting  it.  He  was  so  far  indeed 
from  thinking  of  women  again  as  beings  from 
whom  hurts  were  expected  to  come,  that  he 
blamed  himself  for  not  having  made  an  occa 
sion  out  of  their  enforced  companionship,  for 
speaking  to  the  girl  in  the  train  if  he  should 
meet  her  again. 

"I  must  be  twice  her  age,"  he  told  himself 
determinedly,  "and  no  doubt  she  has  been 
brought  up  to  be  respectful  to  her  elders." 


The  Lovely  Lady  193 

He  looked  out  very  carefully,  therefore,  as 
he  drifted  about  the  canals,  for  a  large,  widowed 
lady  and  a  girl  in  a  round  hat  who  might  have 
come  from  Bloombury,  but  he  did  not  find  her 
that  day  nor  the  next,  nor  the  day  after,  and  in 
the  meantime  Venice  took  him. 

The  ineffable  consolation  of  its  beauty  stole 
upon  him  like  the  breath  of  its  gardens,  as  it 
rose  delicately  from  its  sea  station,  murmurous 
like  a  shell  with  the  whisper  of  joyous  adven 
ture.  It  was,  as  he  told  himself,  a  part  of  the 
sense  of  renewal  which  the  girl  had  afforded 
him,  that  he  was  able  to  accept  its  incompar 
able  charm  as  the  evidence  of  the  continuity  of 
the  world  of  youth  and  passion.  His  being  able 
to  see  it  so  was  a  sort  of  consolation  for  having, 
by  the  illusive  quality  of  his  dreams,  missed 
them  both  on  his  own  account. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  the  morning  of  the 
fourth  day  that  it  drew  him  as  he  had  known  in 
the  beginning  it  inevitably  must,  to  the  core  of 
Venice,  where  in  the  wide  piazza  full  of  sleepy 
light,  the  great  banners  dropped  from  their 
staves  broad  splashes  of  colour  between  the 
slaty  droves  of  doves.  High  over  the  door 


194  The  Lovely  Lady 

the  gold  horses  of  Lysippus  breasted  the  gold 
air  made  shadowless  by  the  approaching  temp- 
orale.  He  was  so  far  then  from  anything 
that  had  to  do  with  his  dream  that  it  was  not 
for  some  moments  after  he  had  turned  into  St. 
Mark's,  obsessed  of  the  sense  of  life  unconquer 
able  and  pervading,  that  he  began  to  take  notice 
of  what  he  saw  there  in  the  dim  wonder.  It 
was  first  of  all  the  smell  of  stale  incense  and 
the  mutter  of  the  mass,  and  then  as  he  bowed 
instinctively  to  the  elevated  Host,  the  snare  of 
the  intricate  mosaic  pavement;  so  by  degrees 
appreciation  cleared  to  the  seductive  polish  of 
the  pillars,  the  rows  of  starred  candles,  and 
beyond  that  to  the  clear  gold  of  the  walls,  with 
all  the  pictures  wrought  flatly  upon  them 
.  .  .  as  it  had  been  in  the  House! 

It  was  some  time  before  he  was  able  to  draw 
up  out  of  his  boyhood  memories,  so  newly  made 
a  gift  to  him,  the  stray,  elucidating  fact  of  his 
father's  early  visit  to  this  spot  and  the  possi 
bility  of  his  dream  having  shaped  itself  about 
some  unremembered  account  of  it.  He  climbed 
up  to  the  galleries  to  give  himself  room  to  that 
wonder  of  memory  which  had  failed  to  pre- 


The  Lovely  Lady  195 

serve  to  him  any  image  of  how  his  father  looked, 
and  yet  had  so  furnished  all  his  imagination. 
Which  didn't  make  any  less  of  a  wonder  of  his 
knowing  as  he  stood  there,  Peter  Weatheral,  of 
the  firm  of  Weatheral,  Lessing  &  Co.,  Real 
Estate  Brokers,  what  it  was  all  about. 

"It's  a  picture-book  of  the  heart  of  man,"  he 
concluded,  and  no  sooner  had  he  shaped  this 
thought  in  his  mind  than  he  heard  it  uttered 
for  him  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  pillar  in  a 
voice  made  soft  by  indulgent  tenderness,  "  Just 
a  great  picture-book."  He  leaned  forward  at  the 
sound  far  enough  to  have  a  glimpse  of  the  Girl 
from  Home,  and  smiled  at  her. 

"So  you've  found  that  out,  have  you?"  It 
was  not  strange  to  find  himself  addressing  her 
friendlily  nor  to  hear  her  answer  him. 

"Just  a  picture-book,"  she  repeated.  "It 
explains  so  much.  What  the  saints  were  to 
them,  and  the  Holy  Personages.  Monkish 
tales  to  prey  upon  their  superstition,  we  were 
taught.  But  you  can  see  here  what  they  really 
were,  the  wonder  tales  of  a  people,  the  fairy 
wonder  and  the  blessed  happenings  come  true 
as  they  do  in  dreams.  Oh,  it  must  have  been  a 


196  The  Lovely  Lady 

good  time  when  the  saints  were  on  the  earth.'* 

"You  believe  in  them,  then?" 

"Here  in  San  Marco,  yes.  But  not  when  I 
am  in  Bloombury." 

"Oh!"  cried  Peter,  "are  you  really  from 
Bloombury?  I  knew  you  were  from  up  coun 
try  but  I  hardly  dared  to  hope  —  if  you  will 

permit  me "  He  searched  for  his  card 

which  she  accepted  without  looking  at  it. 

"You  are  Mr.  Peter  Weatheral,  aren't  you? 
Mrs.  Merrithew  thought  she  recognized  you 
yesterday." 

"Is  that  why  she  glared  at  me  so?  But 
anyway  I  am  obliged  to  her,  though  I  haven't 
vestige  of  a  recollection  of  her." 

"She  didn't  suppose  you  had.  Her  hus 
band  sold  you  some  land  once.  But  of  course 
everybody  in  Bloombury  knows  the  Mr. 
Weatheral  who  went  from  there  to  the  city 
and  made  his  fortune." 

"A  sorry  one,"  said  Peter.  "But  if  you  are 
really  from  Bloombury  why  don't  I  remember 
you?  I  go  there  with  Ellen  every  summer,  and 
she  knows  everybody." 

"Yes;  she  is  so  kind.    Everybody  says  that. 


The  Lovely  Lady  197 

But  I'm  really  from  Harmony.  I  taught  the 
Bloombury  school  last  year.  I  am  Savilla 
Dassonville." 

"Oh,  I  knew  your  father  then!  Now  that  I 
come  to  think  of  it,  it  was  he  who  laid  the 
foundation  of  my  greatness,"  Peter  smiled 
whimsically.  "And  I  knew  your  mother;  she 
was  a  very  lovely  lady." 

He  realized  as  the  girl's  eyes  filled  with  tears, 
that  this  must  have  been  the  child  at  whose 
birth,  he  had  heard,  the  mother  had  died. 
"But  I  suppose  we  mustn't  talk  about  Bloom- 
bury  in  San  Marco,"  he  blamed  his  inadver 
tence,  "though  that  doesn't  seem  to  want 
talking  about  either.  When  you  said  that  just 
now  about  its  being  a  picture-book,  I  was  think 
ing  how  like  it  was  to  one  of  those  places  I  used 
to  go  to  in  my  youth  —  you  know  where  you  go 
in  your  mind  when  you  don't  like  the  place 
where  you  are.  So  like.  I  used  to  call  it  the 
House  of  the  Shining  Walls." 

"I  know,"  she  nodded,  "  mine  is  a  garden." 

"/*?"  said  Peter.  "There's  where  you  have 
the  advantage  of  me." 

"Oh!"  she  exclaimed,  spreading  her  hands 


198  The  Lovely  Lady 

toward  the  pictured  wall  and  the  springing 
domes,  "isn't  this  the  evidence  that  it  is 
always.  Let  us  look." 

The  mass  was  over  and  the  crowd  departing; 
they  moved  from  page  to  page  to  the  storied 
wall  and  identified  in  it  the  springs  of  a  com 
mon  experience. 

"It's  like  nothing  so  much,"  said  Miss 
Dassonville,  "as  the  things  I've  seen  the  chil 
dren  make  at  school,  with  bits  of  coloured  stone 
and  broken  china  and  rags  of  tinsel  or  whatever 
treasures,  laid  out  in  a  pattern  on  the  ground." 

"Something  like  that,"  admitted  Peter. 

"And  that's  why,"  said  Miss  Dassonville, 
"it  doesn't  make  me  feel  at  all  religious.  Just 
— just  —  maternal." 

It  appeared  by  this  time  they  had  become  well 
enough  acquainted  for  Peter  to  remark  that 
she  didn't  seem  to  feel  under  any  obligation  to 
experience  the  prescribed  and  traditional  thrill. 

"Well,  I'm  divided  in  my  mind.  I  don't 
want  to  overlook  any  of  the  facts,  and  I  want  to 
give  the  poor  imprisoned  things  a  chance,  if  they 
have  anything  to  say  that  the  guide  books  have 
missed,  to  get  it  off  their  minds.  I've  always 


The  Lovely  Lady  199 

heard  that  celebrities  grow  tired  of  being  forever 
taken  at  their  public  valuation.  I've  got  a 
Baedeker  and  a  Hare  and  The  Stones  of 
Venice  but  I  neglect  them  quite  as  much  as  I 
read  them,  don't  you?" 

They  had  come  down  into  the  nave  and  she 
went  about  stroking  the  fair  marbles  delicately 
as  though  there  sprang  a  conscious  communica 
tion  from  the  touch.  He  felt  his  mind  accomo- 
dating  to  the  ease  of  hers  with  a  movement  of 
release.  They  spent  so  much  time  in  the  church 
that  when  they  issued  on  the  Piazza  at  last  it 
was  with  amazement  to  discern  that  the  cloud 
mass  which  an  hour  before  had  piled  ethereal 
tones  of  blueness  above  Frauli,  lit  cavernously 
by  soundless  flashes,  had  dissolved  in  rain. 

"And  I  haven't  even  an  umbrella,"  explained 
Miss  Dassonville  with  a  real  dismay. 

"But  I'll  take  you  home  in  my  gondola,"  it 
appeared  to  him  providentially  provided  for 
this  contingency;  "it  is  here  at  the  Piazzetta." 

"Oh,  have  you  a  gondola,  and  is  it  as  much 
of  a  help  as  people  say?  Mrs.  Merrithew  hates 
walking,  but  we  didn't  know  if  we  should  like  it." 

They  whisked  around  the  corner  under  the 


200  The  Lovely  Lady 

arcade  of  the  ducal  palace,  and  almost  before 
they  reached  the  traghetto  the  shower  was 
stayed  and  the  sun  came  out  on  the  lucent 
water.  Peter  allowed  Miss  Dassonville  to  give 
the  direction  lest  she  should  think  it  a  liberty  of 
him  to  have  noticed  and  remembered  it,  but  he 
added  something  to  it  that  caused  her,  as  they 
swung  out  into  the  canal,  to  enter  an  expostu 
lation. 

"But  this  is  not  the  way  to  the  Casa  Frolli!" 
"It's  one  way;  besides,  it  isn't  raining  any 
more,  and  if  you  are  thinking  of  taking  a  gon 
dola  you  ought  to  make  a  trial  trip  or  two,  and 
it's  worth  seeing  how  the  palace  looks  from  the 
canal." 

The  rain  began  again  in  a  little  while,  whiten 
ing  the  water;  the  depth  of  it  blackened  to  the 
cloud  but  the  surface  frothed  like  quicksilver 
under  the  steady  patter.  The  awning  was  up 
and  they  were  safe  against  a  wetting,  but  Peter 
saw  the  girl  shiver  in  the  slight  chill,  and  looking 
at  her  more  attentively  he  perceived  that  she 
might  recently  have  been  ill.  The  likeness  to 
her  mother  came  out  then  in  spite  of  her  plain 
ness,  the  hands,  the  eyes,  the  pleasant  way  of 


The  Lovely  Lady  201 

smiling;  it  was  that  no  doubt  which  had  set 
him  on  the  trail  of  his  old  dreams.  He  tried, 
more  for  the  purpose  of  avoiding  it  than  for 
any  curiosity,  to  remember  what  he  had  ever 
heard  of  David  Dassonville  that  would  account 
for  his  daughter's  teaching  school  when  she 
evidently  wasn't  able  for  it,  but  he  talked  of 
Mrs.  Merrithew. 

"I  must  call  on  her,"  he  said,  "as  soon  as  she 
will  permit  me.  But  tell  me,  what  business  did 
I  do  with  her  husband?" 

"It  was  a  mortgage  —  those  poor  McGuires, 
you  know,  were  in  such  trouble,  and  you " 

"Yes,  I  was  always  nervous  about  mort 
gages.  I  was  bitten  by  one  once.  But  dear 
me,  I  did  not  expect  to  have  my  youthful  indis 
cretions  coming  out  like  this.  What  else  did 
she  tell  you?" 

The  girl  laughed  delightedly.  "Well,  we 
did  rather  talk  you  over.  She  said  you  were  such 
a  good  son.  Even  when  you  were  a  young  man 
on  a  salary  your  mother  had  a  best  black  silk 
and  a  second  best." 

"Women  are  the  queerest!"  Peter  com 
mented  at  large.  "It  was  always  such  a  com- 


The  Lovely  Lady 

fort  to  Ellen  that  mother  had  a  good  silk  to  be 
buried  in.  Now  what  is  there  talismanic  about 
silk?" 

"It's  evidence,"  she  smiled,  "and  that's 
what  women  require  most." 

"Well,  I  hope  Mrs.  Merrithew  will  accept  it 
as  evidence  that  I  am  a  suitable  person  to  take 
you  out  in  a  gondola  this  evening.  You  haven't 
seen  Venice  by  night?" 

"Only  as  we  came  from  the  station.  I'm  sure 
she  would  like  you  to  call,  and  I  hope  she  will 
like  the  gondola." 

"Oh,  she  will  like  it,"  Peter  assured  Miss 
Dassonville  as  he  helped  her  out  in  front  of  the 
Casa  Frolli;  "it  will  remind  her  of  a  rocking 
chair." 

Mrs.  Merrithew  did  like  the  gondola;  she 
liked  everything : — the  spacious  dark,  the  scud 
ding  forms  like  frightened  swans,  the  sound  of 
singing  on  the  water,  the  soft  bulks  of  foliage 
that  overhung  them  in  the  narrow  calle,  the 
soundless  hatchet-faced  prows  that  rounded  on 
them  from  behind  dim  palaces;  and  she  liked 
the  gondola  so  much  that  she  asked  Peter 
"right  out"  what  it  cost  him. 


The  Lovely  Lady  20S 

"We  would  have  taken  one  ourselves," she 
explained  without  waiting,  "only  we  didn't  feel 
able  to  afford  it.  Fifty  francs  a  week  they 
wanted  to  charge  us,  but  maybe  that  was  be 
cause  we  were  Americans;  they  think  Americans 
can  do  everything  over  here.  But  I  suppose 
you  get  yours  cheap  at  the  hotel?" 

"Oh,  much  cheaper." 

"How  much?" 

"Forty  francs,"  hazarded  Peter.  "I'm  sure 
I  could  get  you  one  for  that.  Unless  .  .  . 
if  you  don't  mind  ..."  He  made  [what 
he  hadn't  done  yet  under  any  circumstances,  a 
case  out  of  his  broken  health  to  explain  how  by 
not  getting  up  very  early  and  by  taking  some 
prescribed  exercise,  Giuseppe  and  the  gondola 
had  to  lie  unused  half  the  mornings,  which  was 
very  bad  for  them.  .  .  .  "So,"  he  per 
suaded  them,  "if  you  would  be  satisfied  with  it 
for  half  a  day,  I  would  be  very  much  obliged  to 
you  if  you  would  take  it  ...  share  and 
share  alike."  There  was  as  much  hesitation  in 
Peter's  speech  as  if  it  had  really  been  the  favour 
he  seemed  to  make  it,  though  in  fact  it  grew 
out  of  his  attempt  to  fashion  his  offer  by  what 


204  The  Lovely  Lady 

he  saw  in  the  dusk  of  Miss  Dassonville's  face. 
"In  the  evenings,"  he  finished,  "we  could  take 
it  turn  about.  There  are  a  great  many  even 
ings  when  I  don't  go  out  at  all." 

"Me,  too,"  consented  Mrs.  Merrithew  cheer 
fully.  "I  get  tired  easy,  but  you  and  Sa villa 
could  go."  The  proposal  appealed  to  her  as 
neighbourly,  and  it  was  quite  in  keeping  with 
the  character  of  a  successful  business  man,  as 
he  was  projected  on  the  understanding  of 
Bloombury,  to  wish  not  to  keep  paying  for  a 
thing  of  which  he  had  no  use.  "I  think  we 
might  as  well  close  with  it  at  once,  don't  you, 
Savilla?" 

"If  you  are  sure  it's  only  forty  francs " 

Miss  Dassonville  was  doubtful. 

"Quite  sure,"  Peter  was  very  prompt. 
"You  see  they  keep  them  so  constantly  em 
ployed  at  the  hotel"  —  which  seemed  satis 
factorily  to  make  way  for  the  arrangement  that 
the  gondola  was  to  call  for  the  two  ladies  the 
next  morning. 

"Giuseppe,"  Weatheral  demanded  as  he 
stepped  out  of  the  gondola  at  the  hotel  landing, 
"how  much  do  I  pay  you?" 


The  Lovely  Lady  205 

"Sixty  francs,  Signore." 

Peter  had  no  doubt  the  extra  ten  was  divided 
between  his  own  man  and  the  gondolier,  but  he 
was  not  thinking  of  that. 

"I  have  a  very  short  memory,"  he  said,  "and 
I  have  told  the  Signora  and  the  Signorina  forty 
francs.  If  they  ask  you,  you  are  to  tell  them 
forty  francs ;  and  listen,  Beppe,  every  franc  over 
that  you  tell  them,  I  shall  deduct  from  your 
pourboire  when  I  leave,  do  you  understand?" 

"Si,  Signore." 

VIII 

A  morning  or  two  after  the  arrangement 
about  the  gondola  Peter  was  leaning  over  the 
bridge  of  San  Moise  watching  the  sun  on  the 
copper  vessels  the  women  brought  to  the  foun 
tain,  when  his  man  came  to  him.  This  Luigi 
he  had  picked  up  at  Naples  for  the  chief  excel 
lence  of  his  English  and  a  certain  seraphic  bear 
ing  that  led  Peter  to  say  to  him  that  he  would 
cheerfully  pay  a  much  larger  wage  if  he  could 
only  be  certain  Luigi  would  not  cheat  him. 

"  Oh  Signore!  In  Italy?  Impossible!" 


206  The  Lovely  Lady 

"In  that  case,"  said  Peter,  "if  you  can't  be 
honest  with  me,  be  as  honest  as  you  can"  — 
but  he  had  to  accept  the  lifted  shoulders  and 
the  Raphael  smile  as  his  only  security.  How 
ever,  Luigi  had  made  him  comfortable  and  as  he 
approached  him  now  it  was  without  any  mis 
giving. 

"  I  have  just  seen  Giuseppe  and  the  gondola," 
he  announced.  "They  are  at  the  Palazza  Rez- 
zonico,  and  after  that  they  go  to  San  Georgio 
degli  Sclavoni.  There  are  pictures  there." 

"Oh!  "said  Peter. 

"It  is  a  very  little  way  to  the  San  Georgio," 
volunteered  Luigi  as  they  remained,  master 
and  man,  looking  down  into  the  water  in  the 
leisurely  Venetian  fashion.  "Across  the  Piazza," 
said  Luigi,  "a  couple  of  turns,  a  bridge  or  two 
and  there  you  are;"  and  after  a  long  pause, 
"  The  signore  is  looking  very  well  this  morning. 
Exercise  in  the  sea  air  is  excellent  for  the  health." 

"  Very,"  said  Peter.  "I  shall  go  for  a  walk,  I 
think.  I  shall  not  need  you,  Luigi." 

Nevertheless  Luigi  did  not  lose  sight  of  him 
until  he  was  well  on  his  way  to  Saint  George 
of  the  Sclavoni  which  announced  itself  by  the 


The  Lovely  Lady  207 

ramping  fat  dragon  over  the  door.  There  was 
the  young  knight  riding  him  down  as  of  old, 
and  still  no  Princess. 

"She  must  be  somewhere  on  the  premises," 
said  Peter  to  himself.  "No  doubt  she  has  pre 
served  the  traditions  of  her  race  by  remaining 
indoors."  He  had  not,  however,  accustomed  his 
eyes  to  the  dusk  of  the  little  room  when  he 
heard  at  the  landing  the  scrape  of  the  gondola 
and  the  voices  of  the  women  disembarking. 

"If  we'd  known  you  wanted  to  come,"  ex 
plained  Mrs.  Merrithew  heartily,  "we  could 
have  brought  you  in  the  boat."  That  was  the 
way  she  oftenest  spoke  of  it,  and  other  times  it 
was  the  gondola. 

Peter  explained  his  old  acquaintance  with  the 
charging  saint  and  his  curiosity  about  the  lady, 
but  when  the  custodian  had  brought  a  silver 
paper  screen  to  gather  the  little  light  there  was 
upon  the  mellow  old  Carpaccio,  he  looked  upon 
her  with  a  vague  dissatisfaction. 

"It's  the  same  dragon  and  the  same  young 
man,"  he  admitted.  "I  know  him  by  the 
hair  and  by  the  determined  expression.  But 
I'm  not  sure  about  the  young  lady." 


208  The  Lovely  Lady 

"You  are  looking  for  a  fairy-tale  Princess," 
Miss  Dassonville  declared,  "but  you  have  to 
remember  that  the  knight  didn't  marry  this 
one;  he  only  made  a  Christian  of  her." 

They  came  back  to  it  again  when  they  had 
looked  at  all  the  others  and  speculated  as  to 
whether  Carpaccio  knew  how  funny  he  was 
when  he  painted  Saint  Jerome  among  the 
brethren,  and  whether  in  the  last  picture  he  was 
really  in  heaven  as  Ruskin  reported. 

"So  you  think,"  said  Peter," she'd  have  been 
more  satisfactory  if  the  painter  had  thought 
Saint  George  meant  to  marry  her?" 

"More  personal  and  convincing,"  the  girl 
maintained. 

"There's  one  in  the  Belle  Arti  that's  a  lot 
better  looking  to  my  notion,"  contributed  Mrs. 
Merrithew. 

"Oh,  but  that  Princess  is  running  away," 
the  girl  protested. 

"  It's  what  any  well  brought  up  young  female 
would  be  expected  to  do  under  the  circum 
stances,"  declared  the  elder  lady;  "just  look 
at  them  fragments.  It's  enough  to  turn  the 
strongest." 


The  Lovely  Lady  209 

"It  does  look  a  sort  of  ' After  the  Battle,'  " 
Peter  admitted.  "But  I  should  like  to  see  the 
other  one,"  and  he  fell  in  very  readily  with  Mrs. 
Merrithew's  suggestion  that  he  should  come 
in  the  gondola  with  them  and  drop  into  the 
Academy  on  the  way  home.  They  found  the 
Saint  George  with  very  little  trouble  and  sat 
down  on  one  of  the  red  velvet  divans,  looking  a 
long  time  at  the  fleeing  lady. 

"And  you  think,"  said  Peter,  "she  would  not 
have  run  away?" 

"I  think  she  shouldn't;  when  it's  done  for 
her." 

"But  isn't  that  —  the  running  away  I  mean 
—  the  evidence  of  her  being  worth  doing  it  for,  of 
her  fineness,  of  her  superior  delicacy?" 

"Well,"  Miss  Dassonville  was  not  disposed 
to  take  it  lightly,  "if  a  woman  has  a  right  to  a 
fineness  that's  bought  at  another's  expense. 
They  can't  all  run  away,  you  know,  and  I  can't 
think  it  right  for  a  woman  to  evade  the  dis 
agreeable  things  just  because  some  man  makes 
it  possible." 

"I  believe,"  laughed  Peter,  "if  you  had  been 
the  Princess  you  would  have  killed  the  dragon 


210  The  Lovely  Lady 

yourself.  You'd  have  taken  a  little  bomb  up 
your  sleeve  and  thrown  it  at  him."  He  had 
to  take  that  note  to  cover  a  confused  sense  he 
had  of  the  conversation  being  more  pertinent 
than  he  could  at  that  moment  remember  a 
reason  for  its  being. 

"Oh,  I've  been  delivered  to  the  dragons  before 
now,"  she  said.  "It's  going  on  all  the  time." 
She  moved  a  little  away  from  the  picture  as  if 
to  avoid  the  personal  issue. 

"What  beats  me,"  commented  Mrs.  Merri- 
thew,  "is  that  there  has  to  be  a  young  lady. 
You'd  think  a  likely  young  man,  if  he  met  one 
of  them  things,  would  just  kill  it  on  general 
principles,  the  same  as  a  snake  or  a  spider." 

"Oh,"  said  Peter,  "it's  chiefly  because  they 
are  terrifying  to  young  ladies  that  we  kill  them 
at  all.  Yes,  there  has  to  be  a  young  lady."  He 
was  aware  of  an  accession  of  dreariness  in  the 
certainty  that  in  his  case  there  never  could  be  a 
young  lady.  But  Miss  Dassonville  as  she 
began  to  walk  toward  the  entrance  gave  it  an 
other  turn.. 

"There  is  always  a  young  lady.  The  diffi 
culty  is  that  it  must  be  a  particular  one.  No 


The  Lovely  Lady 

one  takes  any  account  of  those  who  were  eaten 
up  before  the  Princess  appeared." 

"But  you  must  grant/'  said  Peter,  with  an 
odd  sense  of  defending  his  own  position,  "that 
when  one  got  done  with  a  fight  like  that,  one 
would  be  entitled  to  something  particular." 

"Oh,  if  it  came  as  a  reward,"  she  laughed. 
"But  nowadays  we've  reversed  the  process. 
One  makes  sure  of  the  Princess  first,  lest  when 
the  dragon  is  killed  she  should  prove  to  have 
gone  away  with  one  of  the  bystanders." 

Something  that  clicked  in  Peter's  mind  led 
him  to  look  sharply  from  one  to  the  other  of 
the  two  women.  In  Bloombury  they  had  a  way, 
he  knew,  of  not  missing  any  point  of  their 
neighbours'  affairs,  but  their  faces  expressed  no 
trace  of  an  appreciation  of  anything  in  the  sub 
ject  being  applicable  to  his.  The  flick  of 
memory  passed  and  left  him  wondering  why  it 
should  be. 

He  caught  himself  looking  covertly  at  the 
girl  as  the  gondola  swung  into  open  water,  to 
discover  in  her  the  springs  of  an  experience 
such  as  lay  at  the  source  of  his  own  desolation. 
He  perceived  instead  under  her  slight  appear- 


The  Lovely  Lady 

ance  a  certain  warmth  and  colour  like  a  light 
behind  a  breathed-on  window-pane.  Illness, 
overwork,  whatever  dragon's  breath  had 
dimmed  her  surfaces,  she  gave  the  impression  of 
being  inwardly  inexhaustibly  alight  and  alive. 
Something  in  her  leaped  to  the  day,  to  the 
steady  pacing  of  the  gondola  on  the  smooth 
water  tessellated  by  the  sun  in  blue  and  bronze 
and  amber,  to  the  arched  and  airy  palaces  that 
rose  above  it. 

The  awning  was  up;  there  was  strong  sun 
and  pleasant  wind:  from  hidden  gardens  they 
smelled  thejoleanders.  Peter  felt  the  faint  stir  of 
rehabilitation  like  the  breath  of  passing  pres 
ences. 

The  mood  augmented  in  him  as  he  drifted 
late  that  evening  on  the  lagoon  beyond  the 
Guidecca,  after  the  sun  was  gone  down  and  the 
s.ea  and  the  sky  reflected  each  to  each,  one 
roseate  glow  like  a  hollow  shell  of  pearl.  Lit 
peaks  of  the  Alps  ranged  in  the  upper  heaven, 
and  nearer  the  great  dome  of  the  Saluti  sig 
nalled  whitely;  below  them,  all  the  islands  near 
and  far  floated  in  twilit  blueness  on  the  flat 
lagoon.  There  was  by  times,  a  long  sea  swell, 


The  Lovely  Lady  213 

and  no  sound  but  the  tread  of  the  oar  behind  like 
a  woman's  silken  motion.  It  drew  with  it  films 
of  recollection  in  which  his  mood  suspended  like 
gossamer,  a  mood  capable  of  going  on  inde 
pendently  of  his  idea  of  himself  as  a  man  cut  off 
from  those  experiences,  intimations  of  which 
pressed  upon  him  everywhere  by  line  and  form 
and  colour. 

It  had  come  back,  the  precious  intimacy  of 
beauty,  with  that  fullness  sitting  there  in 
the  gondola,  he  realized  with  the  intake  of  the 
breath  to  express  it  and  the  curious  throbbing 
of  the  palms  to  grasp.  He  was  able  to  identify 
in  his  bodily  response  to  all  that  charged  the 
decaying  wonder  of  Venice  with  opulent  per 
sonality,  the  source  of  his  boyish  dreams.  It 
was  no  woman,  he  told  himself,  who  had  gone 
off  with  the  bystanders  while  he  had  been  en 
gaged  with  the  dragons  of  poverty  and  obliga 
tion,  but  merely  the  appreciations  of  beauty. 
There  had  never  been  any  woman,  there  was 
never  going  to  be.  He  began  to  plan  how  he 
should  explain  his  discovery  and  the  bearing  of 
it,  to  Miss  Dassonville.  It  would  be  a  pity  if 
she  were  making  the  same  mistake  about  it. 


214  The  Lovely  Lady 

He  leaned  back  in  the  cushioned  seat  and 
watched  the  silver  shine  of  the  prow  delicately 
peering  out  its  way  among  the  shadowy  isl 
ands;  lay  so  still  and  absorbed  that  he  did  not 
know  which  way  they  went  nor  what  his  gon 
dolier  inquired  of  him,  and  presently  realized 
without  surprise  that  the  Princess  was  speaking 
to  him. 

He  felt  her  first,  warm  and  f riendlily,  and  then 
he  heard  her  laughing.  He  knew  she  was  the 
Princess  though  she  had  no  form  or  likeness. 

"But  which  are  you?"  he  whispered  to  the 
laughter. 

"The  right  one." 

"The  one  who  stayed  or  the  one  who  ran 
away?" 

"  Oh,  if  .you  don't  know  by  this  time!  I  have 
come  to  take  you  to  the  House." 

"Are  you  the  one  who  was  always  there?" 

"The  Lovely  Lady;  there  was  never  any 
other." 

"And  shall  I  go  there  as  I  used? "  asked  Peter, 
"and  be  happy  there?" 

"You  are  free  to  go;  do  you  not  feel  it?" 

"Oh,  here  —  I  feel  many  things.     I  am  just 


The  Lovely  Lady  215 

beginning  to  understand  how  I  came  to  lose  the 
way  to  it." 

"Are  you  so  sure?" 

"Quite."  Peter's  new-found  certainty  was 
strong  in  him.  "I  made  the  mistake  of  think 
ing  that  the  House  was  the  House  of  Love,  and 
it  is  really  the  House  of  Beauty.  I  thought  if  I 
found  the  one  to  love,  I  should  live  in  it  forever. 
But  now  that  I  have  found  the  way  back  to  it  I 
see  that  was  a  mistake." 

"How  did  you  find  it?" 

"Well,  there  is  a  girl  here 

"Ah!"  said  the  Princess. 

"She  is  young,"  Peter  explained;  "she  looks 
at  things  the  way  I  used  to,  and  that  somehow 
brought  me  around  to  the  starting-point  again." 

"I  see,"  said  the  Princess;  the  look  she  turned 
on  him  was  full  of  a  strange,  secret  intelli 
gence  which  as  he  returned  it  without  knowing 
what  it  was  about,  afforded  Peter  the  greatest 
satisfaction.  "Do  you  know  me  now,"  she 
said  at  last,  "which  one  I  am?" 

"The  right  one,  I  am  sure  of  that." 

"But  which?" 

"I  know  now,"  Peter  answered,  "but  I  am 


216  The  Lovely  Lady 

certain  that  in  the  morning  I  shall  not  be  able 
to  remember." 

It  was  true  as  Peter  had  said  that  the  next 
morning  he  was  in  as  much  doubt  as  ever  about 
the  princesses.  He  thought  he  would  go  and 
have  a  look  at  them  but  forgot  what  he  had 
come  for  once  he  had  entered  the  spacious  quiet 
of  the  Academy.  Warmed  still  from  his  con 
tact  of  the  night  before  he  found  the  pictures 
sentient  and  friendly.  He  found  trails  in  them 
that  led  he  knew  now  where,  and  painted 
waters  that  lapped  the  fore-shore  of  remem 
brance. 

After  an  hour  in  which  he  had  seen  the  mean 
ing  of  the  pictures  emerge  from  the  frontier 
of  mysticism  which  he  knew  now  for  the  reflec 
tion  of  his  own  unstable  state,  and  proceed 
toward  him  by  way  of  his  intelligence,  he  heard 
the  Princess  say  at  his  shoulder,  at  least  he 
thought  it  might  have  been  the  Princess  for  the 
first  word  or  two,  until  he  turned  and  saw  Miss 
Dassonville.  She  was  staring  at  the  dim  old 
canvases  patched  with  saints,  and  her  eyes 
were  tender. 

"They  are  not  really  saints,  you  know,  they 


The  Lovely  Lady  217 

are  only  a  sort  of  hieroglyphics  that  spell  de 
votion.  It  isn't  as  though  they  had  the  breath 
of  life  breathed  into  them  and  could  come  down 
from  their  canvases  as  some  of  them  do." 

"Oh,"  he  protested,  "did  you  think  of  that 
for  yourself?  It  was  the  Princess  who  said  it 
to  me." 

"The  Princess  of  the  Dragon?" 

"She  came  to  me  last  night  on  the  lagoon. 
It  was  wonderful, —  the  water  shine  and  the  rosy 
glow.  I  was  wishing  I  had  insisted  on  your 
coming,  and  all  at  once  there  was  the  Princess." 

"The  one  who  stayed  or  the  one  who  ran 
away?" 

"She  declined  to  commit  herself.  I  suppose 
it's  one  of  the  things  a  man  has  to  find  out." 
He  experienced  a  great  lift  of  his  spirit  in  the 
girl's  light  acceptance  of  his  whimsicality,  it 
was  the  sort  of  thing  that  Eunice  Goodward 
used  to  be  afraid  to  have  any  one  hear  him  say 
lest  they  should  think  it  odd.  It  occurred  to 
him  as  he  turned  and  walked  beside  Miss 
Dassonville  that  if  he  had  come  to  Italy  with 
Eunice  there  might  have  been  a  great  deal  that 
she  would  not  have  liked  to  hear.  He  could 


218  The  Lovely  Lady 

think  things  of  that  sort  of  her  now  with  a 
queer  lightness  as  of  ease  after  strain,  and  yet 
not  think  it  a  merit  of  Miss  Dassonville's  so  to 
ease  him.  They  walked  through  the  rooms  full 
of  the  morning  coolness,  and  let  the  pictures  say 
what  they  would  to  them. 

"It  is  strange  to  me,"  said  the  girl,  "the 
reality  of  pictures;  as  if  they  had  reached  a  point 
under  the  artist's  hand  where  they  became  sud 
denly  independent  of  him  and  went  about  say 
ing  a  great  deal  more  than  he  meant  and  perhaps 
more  than  he  could  understand.  I  am  sure 
they  must  have  a  world  of  their  own  of  picture 
rock  and  tree  and  stone,  where  they  go  when 
they  are  not  being  looked  at  on  their  canvases." 

"Oh,  haven't  you  found  them,  then?" 

"In  dreams  you  mean?  Not  in  Bloom- 
bury;  they  don't  get  so  far  from  home.  One  of 
these  little  islands  I  suspect,  that  lie  so  low  and 
look  so  blue  and  airy." 

"Will  you  go  with  me  in  the  gondola  to  dis 
cover  it?" 

"To-night?" 

"To-morrow."  He  was  full  of  a  plan  to  take 
her  and  Mrs.  Merrithew  to  the  Lido  that  same 


The  Lovely  Lady  219 

evening  to  have  dinner,  and  to  come  home  after 
moonrise,  to  discover  Venice.  She  agreed  to 
that,  subject  to  Mrs.  Merrithew's  consent,  and 
they  went  out  to  find  that  lady  at  a  bead  shop 
where  she  spent  a  great  many  hours  in  a  state 
of  delightful  indecision. 

Mrs.  Merrithew  proving  quite  in  the  mood 
for  it,  they  went  to  the  Lido  with  an  extra 
gondolier  —  Miss  Dassonville  had  stipulated 
for  one  who  could  sing — and  came  home  in  time 
to  see  Venice  all  a-flower,  with  the  continual 
slither  of  the  gondolas  about  it  like  some  slim 
sort  of  moth.  They  explored  Saint  George  of 
the  Sea  Weed  after  that,  took  tea  in  the  public 
gardens  and  had  a  day  at  Torcello.  On  such 
occasions  when  Peter  and  Mrs.  Merrithew 
talked  apart,  the  good  lady  who  got  on  excel 
lently  with  the  rich  Mr.  Weatheral  grew  more 
than  communicative  on  the  subject  of  Savilla 
Dassonville.  It  was  not  that  she  talked  of  the 
girl  so  much  nor  so  freely,  but  that  she  left  him 
with  the  sense  of  her  own  exasperation  at  the 
whole  performance.  It  was  a  thin  little  waif  of  a 
story  as  it  came  from  Mrs.  Merrithew,  needing 
to  be  taken  in  and  comforted  before  it  would 


220  The  Lovely  Lady 

yield  even  to  Peter,  who  as  a  rich  man  had 
come  to  have  a  fair  discernment  in  pitiable 
cases,  the  faint  hope  of  a  rescue.  There  had 
been,  to  begin  with,  the  death  of  the  girl's 
mother  at  her  birth,  followed  by  long  years  of 
neglect  growing  out  of  just  that  likeness  to  the 
beloved  wife  which  first  excited  her  father's 
aversion  and  afterward  became  the  object  of  a 
jealous,  insistent  tenderness. 

After  his  wife's  death,  Dave  Dassonville  had 
lost  his  grip  on  his  property  as  he  had  on  all 
the  means  of  living.  Later  he  was  visited  by  a 
stringency  which  Mrs.  Merrithew  was  inclined 
to  impute  to  a  Providence,  which,  however 
prompt  it  had  been  in  the  repayment  of  the 
slight  to  the  motherless  infant,  had  somehow 
failed  to  protect  her  from  its  consequences. 
Savilla's  girlhood  had  been  devoted  to  nursing 
her  father  to  his  grave,  to  which  he  had  gone 
down  panting  for  release;  after  that  she  had 
taught  the  village  school. 

The  winter  before,  tramping  through  the 
heavy  snow,  she  had  contracted  a  bronchitis 
that  had  developed  so  alarmingly  as  to  demand, 
by  the  authority  of  the  local  doctor,  "a  trip 


The  Lovely  Lady 

somewhere"  -"and  nobody,"  said  Mrs.  Mer- 
rithew,  "but  me  to  go  with  her." 

"Not,"  she  added,  "that  I'm  complainm'. 
Merrithew  left  me  well  off,  and  there's  no 
denyin'  travelling  improvin'  to  the  mind, 
though  at  my  age  it's  some  wearin'  to  the  body. 
I'm  glad,"  she  further  confided  to  Peter  at 
Torcello,  "she  takes  so  to  Venice.  It's  a  lot 
more  comfortable  goin'  about  in  a  gondola.  At 
Rome,  now,  I  nearly  run  my  legs  off." 

It  was  later  when  Savilla  had  been  kept  at 
home  by  a  slight  indisposition  from  a  shower 
that  caught  them  unprepared,  she  expressed  her 
doubt  of  a  winter  in  Italy  being  anything  more 
than  a  longer  stick  with  which  to  beat  a  dog. 

"She  will  have  spent  all  her  money  on  it,  and 
the  snow  will  be  just  as  deep  in  Bloombury  next 
year.  There  isn't  anything  really  the  matter 
with  her,  but  she's  just  too  fine  for  it.  It's  like 
seeing  a  clumsy  person  handlin'  one  of  them 
spun  glass  things,  the  way  I  have  to  sit  still  and 
see  Providence  dealing  with  Savilla  Dassonville. 
It  may  be  sort  of  sacrilegious  to  say  so,  but  I 
declare  it  gives  me  the  fidgets." 

It  ought  of  course  to  have  given  Peter,  seeing 


The  Lovely  Lady 

the  interest  he  took  in  her,  a  like  uneasiness; 
but  there  was  something  in  the  unmitigated 
hardness  of  her  situation  that  afforded  him  the 
sort  of  easement  he  had,  inexplicably,  in  the 
plainness  of  her  dress.  His  memory  was  not 
working  well  enough  yet  for  him  to  realize  that 
it  was  relief  from  the  strain  of  the  secondary 
feminity  that  had  fluttered  and  allured  in 
Eunice  Good  ward. 

It  was  even  more  unclearly  that  he  recognized 
that  it  had  been  a  strain.  All  this  time  he  had 
been  forgetting  her — and  how  completely  he  had 
forgotten  her  this  new  faculty  for  comparison 
was  proof  —  he  had  still  been  enslaved  by  her 
appearance.  It  was  an  appearance,  that  of 
Eunice's,  which  he  admired  still  in  the  young 
American  women  at  the  expensive  hotels  where 
he  had  put  up,  and  admitted  as  the  natural,  the 
inevitable  sign  of  an  inward  preciousness.  But 
if  he  allowed  to  himself  that  he  would  never 
have  spoken  to  Sa villa  Dassonville  that  day  at 
San  Marco,  if  she  had  been  to  the  eye  anything 
that  Eunice  Goodward  was,  he  told  himself  it 
was  because  he  was  not  sure  from  behind  which 
of  those  charming  ambuscades  the  arrows  of 


The  Lovely  Lady  223 

desolation  might  be  shot.  If  he  gave  himself 
up  now  to  the  play  of  the  girl's  live  fancy  he 
did  so  in  the  security  of  her  plainness,  out  of 
which  no  disturbing  surprises  might  come. 
And  she  left  him,  in  respect  to  her  hard  condi 
tions,  without  even  the  excuse  for  an  attitude. 
Eunice  had  been  poor  in  her  world,  and  had 
carried  it  with  just  that  admixture  of  bright 
frankness  and  proud  reserve  which,  in  her 
world,  supported  such  a  situation  with  most 
charm.  She  made  as  much  use  of  her  difficulties 
as  a  Spanish  dancer  of  her  shawl;  but  Sa villa 
Dassonville  was  just  poor,  and  that  was  the  end 
of  it.  That  he  got  on  with  her  so  well  by  the 
simple  process  of  talking  out  whatever  he  was 
most  interested  in,  occurred  to  Peter  as  her  nat 
ural  limitation.  It  was  not  until  they  had  been 
going  out  together  for  a  week  or  more,  in  such 
fashion  as  his  mending  health  allowed,  that  he 
had  moments  of  realizing,  in  her  swift  appro 
priations  of  Venice,  rich  possibilities  of  the  per 
sonal  relations  with  which  he  believed  himself 
forever  done.  Oddly  it  provoked  in  him  the 
wish  to  protect,  when  the  practical  situation 
had  left  him  dry  and  bare. 


The  Lovely  Lady 

It  was  the  evening  of  the  Serenata.  They 
were  all  there  in  the  gondola,  Mrs.  Merrithew 
and  the  girl,  with  Luigi  squatting  by  Giuseppe, 
not  too  far  from  the  music  float  that  sprang 
mysteriously  from  the  black  water  in  arching 
boughs  of  red  and  gold  and  pearly  Alad 
din's  fruit.  Behind  them  the  lurking  prows 
rustled  and  rocked  drunkenly  with  the  swell  to 
which  they  seemed  at  times  attentively  to  lean. 
They  could  make  out  heads  crowded  in  the 
gondolas,  and  silver  gleams  of  the  prows  as 
they  drifted  past  palaces  lit  intermittently  by  a 
red  flare  that  wiped  out  for  the  moment,  the 
seastain  and  disfiguring  patches  of  restora 
tion. 

They  had  passed  the  palace  of  Camerleigh. 
The  jewel-fruited  arbour  folded  and  furled 
upon  itself  to  pass  the  slow  curve  of  the  Rialto, 
and  suddenly,  Peter's  attention,  drawn  mo 
mentarily  from  the  music,  was  caught  by  that 
other  bright  company  leaning  from  deserted 
balconies,  swarming  like  the  summer  drift  be 
tween  the  pillars  of  dark  loggias.  They  were 
all  there,  knights  and  saints  and  ladies,  out  of 
print  and  paint  and  marble,  and  presently  he 


The  Lovely  Lady  225 

made  out  the  Princess.  She  was  leaning  out 
of  one  of  the  high,  floriated  windows,  looking 
down  on  him  with  pleased,  secret  understanding 
as  she  might  have  smiled  from  her  palace  walls 
on  the  festival  that  brought  the  young  knight 
George  home  with  the  conquered  dragon.  It 
was  the  compressed  and  pregnant  meaning  of 
her  gaze  that  drew  his  own  upward,  and  it 
was  then  when  the  Lovely  Lady  turned  and 
waved  her  hand  at  him  that  he  felt  the  girl 
stir  strangely  beside  him. 

y"How  full  the  night  is  of  the  sense  of  pres 
ences,"  she  said,  "as  if  all  the  loved  marbles 
came  to  life  and  the  adored  had  left  their  can 
vases.  I  cannot  think  but  it  is  so." 

"Oh,  I  am  sure  of  it." 

She  moved  again  with  the  vague  restlessness 
of  one  stared  upon  by  innumerable  eyes. 
"How  one  would  like  to  speak,"  she  said. 
"They  seem  so  near  us." 

There  was  a  warm  tide  of  that  nearness  rising 
in  Peter's  blood.  As  the  music  flowed  out 
again  in  summer  fullness,  he  put  out  his  arm 
along  the  back  of  the  seat  instinctively  in  an 
swer  to  the  girl's  shy  turning,  the  natural  move- 


226  The  Lovely  Lady 

ment  of  their  common  equity  in  the  night's 
unrealized  wonder. 

IX 

"Peter!  oh,  Peter!" 

It  was  dark  in  the  room  when  Peter  awoke, 
but  he  knew  it  was  morning  by  the  salt  smell 
which  he  thought  came  into  the  room  from  the 
cove  beyond  Bloombury  pastures,  until  he 
roused  in  his  bed  and  knew  it  for  the  smell  of 
the  lagoons.  He  looked  out  to  see  the  begin 
ning  of  rose  light  on  the  world  and  understood 
that  he  was  called.  He  did  not  hear  the  voice 
again  but  out  there  in  the  shimmering  space 
the  call  awaited  him.  It  might  be  the  Prin 
cess. 

He  dressed  and  got  down  quietly  into  the 
shadowed  city  and  waked  a  frowsy  gondolier 
asleep  in  his  gondola.  They  spoke  softly,  both 
of  them,  before  the  morning  hush,  as  they  swung 
out  into  the  open  water  between  the  towers 
of  San  Georgio  f airily  dim,  and  the  pillars  of  the 
saints;  the  city  floated  in  a  mist  of  blueness, 
the  dome  of  the  Saluti  faintly  pearled. 


The  Lovely  Lady 

"Dove,  Signore?"  The  gondolier  feathered 
his  oar. 

"Un  giro'9  -Peter  waved  his  arm  seaward; 
the  dip  of  the  oar  had  a  stealthy  sound  in  the 
deserted  dawning.  They  passed  the  public 
gardens  and  saw  the  sea  widen  and  the  morning 
quicken.  Islands  swam  up  out  of  silver  space, 
took  form  and  colour,  and  there  between  the 
islands  he  saw  the  girl.  She  had  gotten  another 
oar  from  Giuseppe  and  stood  delighting  in  the 
free  motion;  her  sleeves  were  rolled  up,  her  hat 
was  off,  her  hair  blew  out;  alive  and  pliant  she 
bent  to  the  long  sweep  of  it,  and  her  eyes  were 
on  the  morning  wonder.  But  when  she  caught 
sight  of  Peter  she  looked  only  at  him  and  he 
knew  that  her  seeing  him  appearing  thus  on  the 
shining  water  was  its  chief  and  exquisite 
wonder,  and  that  she  did  not  know  what  he  saw. 
The  gondolier  steered  straight  for  the  girl  with 
out  advice;  he  had  thought  privately  that  the 
Signore  Americano  was  a  little  mad,  but  he 
knew  now  with  what  manner  of  madness. 

They  drew  close  and  drif ted  alongside.  Peter 
did  not  take  his  eyes  from  the  girl's  eyes  lest 
for  her  to  look  away  ever  so  slightly  from  there 


228  The  Lovely  Lady 

to  his  face  would  be  to  discover  that  he  knew; 
and  he  did  not  know  how  he  stood  with  himself 
toward  that  knowledge  . 

"Oh,"  she  said  breathlessly,  "I  wanted  you 
—  I  called  you  —  and  you  came!  You  did 
not  know  where  I  was  and  yet  you  came?" 

"I  heard  you  calling." 

She  left  her  oar  and  sat  down;  Peter  laid  his 
hand  on  the  edge  of  her  gondola  and  they 
drifted  side  by  side. 

"May  I  come  with  you?"  he  asked  presently. 

She  made  a  little  gesture,  past  all  speech. 
Peter  held  up  a  hand  full  of  silver  toward  his 
gondolier  and  laid  it  on  the  seat  as  he  stepped 
lightly  over.  The  man  slid  away  from  them 
without  word  or  motion,  and  together  they  faced 
the  morning.  It  was  one  thin  web  of  rose  and 
gold  over  lakes  of  burnished  light;  islands  lifted 
in  mirage,  floated  miraculously  upon  the  verge  of 
space.  Behind  them  the  mainland  banked  like 
a  new  created  world  over  which  waited  the 
Hosts  of  the  ranked  Alps.  Winged  boats  from 
Murano  slid  through  the  flat  lagoons. 

There  was  very  little  to  say.  Peter  was 
aware  chiefly,  in  what  came  from  her  to  him, 


The  Lovely  Lady 

of  the  wish  to  be  very  tender  toward  it,  of  hav 
ing  it  in  hand  to  support  her  securely  above  the 
abyss  into  which  he  felt  at  the  least  rude  touch 
of  his,  she  must  immeasurably  fall.  At  the 
best  he  could  but  keep  with  her  there  at  the 
point  of  her  unconsciousness  by  knowing  the 
truth  himself,  as  he  felt  amazingly  that  he  did 
know  it  with  all  the  completeness  of  his  stripped 
and  beggared  past. 

They  drifted  and  saw  the  morning  widen 
into  the  working-day.  Market  boats  piled 
with  fruit,  fish  in  shining  heaps,  wood  boats  of 
Istria,  went  by  with  Madonna  painted  sails. 
Among  the  crowded  goods  the  women  sat 
Madonna-wise  and  nursed  their  bambini,  or 
cherishing  the  recurrent  hope,  knitted  inter 
minably.  If  he  wanted  any  evidence  of  what 
he  admitted  between  the  girl  and  himself  it 
flashed  out  for  him  in  the  faces  of  the  market 
wives,  on  whom  labour  and  maternity  sat  not 
too  heavily  to  cloud  the  primal  radiance.  It 
was  there  in  their  soft  Buon  giorno  in  the  way 
they  did  not,  as  the  gondola  drew  beside  them, 
cover  their  fruitful  breasts  from  her  tender  eyes, 
in  the  way  most  fall,  they  grasped  in  the  high 


230  The  Lovely  Lady 

mood  of  the  forestieri  a  sublimity  untouched 
by  the  niceties  of  bargaining.  A  man  in  the 
state  of  mind  to  which  the  girl's  visible  shine 
confessed,  could  hardly  be  expected  to  stickle 
at  the  price  of  the  few  figs  and  roses  which 
served  as  an  easy  passage  from  the  wonder  of 
their  meeting  to  the  ground  of  their  accustomed 
gay  pretences.  They  made  of  Peter's  purchases 
of  fruit  and  flowers  a  market  garden  of  their 
own  from  which  they  had  but  just  come  on 
hopeful  errands.  They  made  believe  again  as 
boats  thickened  like  winged  things  in  a  summer 
garden,  to  be  bent  upon  discovery,  and  slid  with 
pretended  caution  under  the  great  ships  sta 
tioned  by  the  Giudecca,  from  which  they  heard 
sailors  singing.  They  shot  with  exaggerated 
shivers  past  a  slim  cruiser  and  suddenly  Miss 
Dassonville  clutched  Peter  by  the  arm. 

"Oh!"  she  cried:  "Do  you  see  it?  That 
little  dark,  impudent-looking  one,  and  the 
flag?" 

Peter  saw;  he  was  not  quite,  he  reminded  her, 
even  in  the  intoxication  of  a  morning  on  the 
lagoons  with  her,  quite  in  that  state  where  he 
couldn't  see  his  country's  flag  when  it  was 


The  Lovely  Lady  231 

pointed  out  to  him.  They  came  alongside  with 
long  strokes,  and  sniffed  deliciously. 

"Ah  —  um  —  um '  said  Miss  Dasson- 

ville.  "I  know  what  that  is.  It's  ham  and 
eggs.  How  long  since  you've  had  a  real  Ameri 
can  breakfast?" 

"Not  since  I  left  the  steamer,"  Peter  con 
fessed.  "Now  if  I  were  to  smell  hot  cakes  I 
shouldn't  be  able  to  stand  it.  I  should  go 
aboard  her." 

Miss  Dassonville  saluted  softly  as  they  went 
under  the  bright  banner. 

"  'Oh,  say  can  you  see  by  the  dawn's  early 
light,'"  she  began  to  sing  and  immediately  a 
large,  blooming  face  rose  through  a  mist  of 
faded  whisker  at  the  prow  and  they  saw  all  the 
coast  of  Maine  looking  down  on  them  from  the 
rail  of  the  Merrythought. 

"United  States,  ahoy?"  it  said. 

They  came  close  under  and  Miss  Dassonville 
hailed  in  return;  as  soon  as  the  captain  saw  her 
face  smiling  up  at  him  he  beamed  on  it  as  the 
women  in  the  boats  had  done. 

"We  smelled  your  breakfast,"  she  explained, 
and  the  man  laughed  delightedly. 


The  Lovely  Lady 

"I  know  what  kind  these  Dagoes  give  ye. 
Come  up  and  have  some." 

Peter  and  the  girl  consulted  with  their 
eyes. 

"Are  you  going  to  have  hot  cakes?"  she 
demanded. 

"I  will  if  you  come;  darned  if  I  don't." 

"We're  coming,  then." 

It  was  part  of  the  task  that  Peter  had  set 
himself,  to  persevere  for  Savilla  Dassonville  the 
film  of  unconsciousness  that  lay  delicately  like 
the  bloom  of  a  rare  fruit  over  all  that  was  at  that 
moment  going  on  in  her,  that  made  him  hasten 
as  soon  as  Captain  Dunham  had  announced 
himself,  to  introduce  her  particularly  by  name. 
To  forestall  in  the  jolly  sailor  the  natural 
interpretation  of  their  appearance  together 
at  this  hour  and  occasion,  he  had  to  lend 
himself  to  the  only  other  reasonable  surmise. 
If  they  were  not,  as  he  saw  it  on  the  tip  of 
the  good  captain's  tongue  to  propose,  newly 
married,  they  were  in  a  hopeful  way  to  be. 
The  consciousness  of  himself  as  accessory  to 
so  delightful  an  arrangement  passed  from  rthe 
captain  to  Peter  with  almost  the  obviousness 


The  Lovely  Lady  233 

of  a  wink,  as  he  surrendered  himself  to  the 
charm  of  the  girl's  ethereal  excitement. 

He  understood  perfectly  that  his  not  being 
able  to  feel  more  of  a  drop  from  the  pregnant 
mystery  of  her  call  and  his  high  response  to  it, 
to  the  homely  incident  of  breakfast,  was  due 
to  Miss  Dassonville's  obliviousness  of  its  being 
one.  It  was  for  her,  in  fact,  no  drop  at  all  but 
rather  as  if  they  had  pulled  out  for  a  moment 
into  this  little  shoal  of  neighbourly  interest  and 
comfortable  food,  the  better  to  look  back  at  the 
perfect  wonder  of  it,  as  from  the  deck  of  the 
Merrythought  toward  the  fair  front  of  the  ducal 
palace  and  the  blue  domes  of  St.  Mark's  be 
hind  the  rearing  lion. 

Although  he  had  parted  from  her  that  morn 
ing  with  no  hint  of  an  arrangement  for  a  next 
meeting,  it  had  become  a  part  of  the  day's  per 
formance  for  Peter  to  call  for  the  two  ladies  in 
the  afternoon,  so  much  so  that  his  own  sense 
of  the  unusualness  of  finally  letting  the  gondola 
go  off  without  him,  and  his  particular  wish  at  this 
juncture  not  to  mark  his  intercourse  with  any 
unusualness,  led  him  to  send  off  with  it  as 
many  roses  as  Luigi  could  find  at  that  season 


£34  The  Lovely  Lady 

on  the  Piazza.  Afterward,  as  he  recalled  that 
he  had  never  sent  flowers  to  Miss  Dasson- 
ville  before,  and  as  he  had  that  morning 
furnished  her  from  the  market  boats  past  her 
protesting  limitation,  it  was  perhaps  a  greater 
emphasis  to  his  desertion. 

However,  it  seemed  that  the  roses  and  nothing 
but  the  roses  might  serve  as  a  bridge,  delicate 
and  dizzying,  to  support  them  from  the  realiza 
tion  of  their  situation,  into  which  he  had  no  in 
tention  of  letting  Miss  Dassonville  fall.  He 
stayed  in  his  room  most  of  that  afternoon, 
knowing  that  he  was  shut  up  with  a  very  great 
matter,  not  able  to  feel  it  so  because  of  the  dry- 
ness  of  his  heart,  nor  to  think  what  was  to  be 
done  about  it  because  of  the  lightness  of  his 
brain. 

It  occurred  to  him  at  last  that  at  St.  Mark's 
there  might  be  reflective  silences  and  perhaps 
resolution.  He  felt  it  warm  from  the  stored- 
up  veneration'of  the  world,  and  though  he  said 
to  himself,  as  he  climbed  to  the  galleries,  that 
it  was  to  give  himself  the  more  room  to  think, 
he  knew  that  it  must  have  been  in  his  mind  all 
the  time  that  the  girl  was  there,  as  it  was 


The  Lovely  Lady  235 

natural  she  should  have  come  to  the  place 
where  they  had  met.  Even  before  he  caught  the 
outline  of  her  dress  against  the  pillar  he  found 
himself  crossing  over  to  the  organ  loft  the  better 
to  observe  her.  Knowledge  reached  him  in 
credibly  across  the  empty  space,  as  to  what, 
over  and  above  the  pictured  saints,  she  faced 
there  in  the  vault,  lit  so  faintly  by  the  shining 
of  its  golden  walls.  The  service  of  the  bene 
diction  going  on  in  the  church  below  furnished 
him  with  the  figure  of  what  came  to  him  from 
her  as  she  laid  up  her  thoughts  on  an  altar 
before  that  mysterious  intimation  of  maternity 
which  presages  in  right  women  the  movement 
of  passion.  He  felt  himself  caught  up  in  it 
purely  above  all  sense  of  his  personal  insuffi 
ciency. 

Back  in  his  hotel  after  dinner  he  found  he  had 
still  to  let  the  roses  answer  for  him  as  he  sat  out 
on  his  balcony  and  realized  oddly  that  though 
he  had  no  right  to  go  to  Miss  Dassonville 
again  until  he  had  thought  out  to  its  further 
most  his  relation  to  her,  he  could,  incontinently, 
think  better  in  her  company. 

It  was  not  wholly  then  with  surprise,  since 


236  The  Lovely  Lady 

he  felt  himself  so  much  in  need  of  some  com 
pelling  touch,  that  he  heard,  after  an  hour 
of  futile  battling,  the  Princess  speak  to 
him. 

She  stood  just  beyond  him  in  the  shadow  of 
the  wistaria  that  went  up  all  the  front  of  the 
balcony,  and  called  him  by  his  name. 

"Ah,"  said  Peter  "  I  know  now  who  you  are. 
You  are  the  one  who  stayed." 

"How  did  you  find  out?" 

"Because  the  one  who  ran  away  was  the  one 
he  would  have  married." 

He  did  not  look  at  the  Princess,  but  he  saw 
the  shadow  of  her  that  the  moon  made,  mixed 
with  the  lace  of  the  wistaria  leaves,  tremble. 

"Well,"  said  she,  "and  what  are  you  going 
to  do  about  it?" 

"You  know  then     .     .     .     ?" 

"I  was  there  on  the  water  with  you  this 
morning.  ...  It  was  I  that  showed  you 
the  way,  but  you  had  no  eyes  for  any 
thing." 

It  was  the  swift  recurrent  start  of  what  he 
had  had  eyes  for  that  kept  Peter  silent  long 
enough  for  the  Princess  to  have  asked  him 


The  Lovely  Lady  237 

again  what  he  was  going  to  do  about  it,  and 
then- 

"The  other  night  —  with  the  music  —  she 
knew  that  I  was  there?" 

"Oh  —  she! "  He  was  taken  all  at  once  with 
the  completeness  with  which  in  his  intimate 
attitude  to  things,  Savilla  did  know.  "She 
knows  everything." 

"What  was  there  so  different  about  the  other 
one?" 

"Everything  .  .  .  she  was  beautiful 
.  .  .  she  was  air  and  fire  .  .  .  she 
made  the  earth  rock  under  me." 

"And  did  you  go  to  her  calling?" 

"I  would  have  risen  out  of  death  and  dust  at 
her  slightest  word  ...  I  would  have  fol 
lowed  where  her  feet  went  over  all  the  world." 

"And  why  did  you  never?" 

"I  suppose,"  said  Peter,  "it  was  because 
she  never  called." 

"This  one,"  suggested  the  Princess,  "would 
be  prettier  if  she  were  not  so  thin;  and  she 
wouldn't  have  to  wear  shirtwaists  if  you  mar 
ried  her.  She  makes  them  herself,  you  know. 
Why  did  the  other  one  run  away?" 


238  The  Lovely  Lady 

"That's  just  the  difficulty.  I  can't  remem 
ber."  He  wished  sincerely  within  himself 
that  he  might;  it  seemed  it  would  have  served 
him  somehow  with  Miss  Dassonville.  "I've 
been  very  ill,"  he  apologized. 

"Anyway,  you'd  be  getting  what  every 
body  wants." 

"And  that  is  -    -" 

"A  woman  of  your  own  .  .  .  under 
standing  and  care  .  .  .  and  children.  I 
was  in  the  church  with  you  .  .  .  you 
saw " 

"But  I  don't  want  to  talk  about  it." 

"What  do  you  want  then?" 

"To  be  the  prince  in  a  fairy  tale,  I  suppose," 
Peter  sighed. 

"Oh,  you're  all  of  that  to  her.  The  half 
god  —  the  unmatched  wonder.  When  she 
watched  your  coming  across  the  water  this 
morning  —  I  know  the  look  that  should  go  to  a 
slayer  of  dragons.  It  seems  to  me,"  said  the 
Princess  severely,  "it  is  you  who  are  running 
away." 

She  was  wise  enough  to  leave  him  with  that 
view  of  it  though  it  was  not  by  any  means 


The  Lovely  Lady  239 

leaving  him  more  comfortable.  He  tried  for 
relief  to  figure  himself  as  by  the  Princess'  sug 
gestion,  he  must  seem  to  Savilla  Dassonville. 
But  if  he  was  really  such  to  her  why  could  he 
not  then  play  the  Deliverer  in  fact,  rescue  her 
from  untended  illness,  from  meagreness  and 
waste?  Why  not,  in  short,  marry  her,  except 
for  a  reason  —  oh,  there  was  reason  enough  if 
he  could  only  remember  it! 

He  heard  Luigi  moving  softly  in  the  room 
behind,  and  presently  when  the  door  clicked  he 
rose  and  went  in  and  taking  the  lamp  held  it 
high  over  him,  turning  with  it  fronting  the 
huge  mirror  in  its  gilded  frame.  If  there  were 
a  good  reason  why  he  couldn't  marry  Savilla 
Dassonville,  he  ought  to  have  found  it  in  his 
own  lean  frame,  the  face  more  drawn  than  was 
justified  by  his  years,  lined  about  the  eyes,  the 
hand  that  held  the  accusing  lamp  broadened 
by  labours  that  no  scrupulosity  of  care  denied. 
Weatheral,  of  Weatheral,  Lessing  &  Co.,  un 
accomplished,  unaccustomed.  He  put  down 
the  lamp  heavily,  leaning  forward  in  his  chair 
as  he  covered  his  face  with  his  hands  and 
groaned  in  them,  fully  remembering. 


240  The  Lovely  Lady 

X 

He  had  been  sitting  just  so  in  his  library 
with  the  lamp  behind  him  and  the  hollow  flare 
of  the  coals  making  an  excellent  starting  place 
for  the  House  which  was  now  so  near  him  that 
the  mere  exhibition  in  shop  windows  of  the 
stuffs  with  which  it  was  being  modernly  re 
newed,  was  enough  to  set  him  off  for  it.  It 
was  so  near  now,  that  since  the  announcement 
of  their  engagement  in  September,  he  had 
moved  through  all  its  obligations  benumbed 
by  the  white,  blinding  flash  thrown  backward 
from  its  consummating  moment,  the  moment 
of  her  cry  to  him,  of  their  welding  at  the  core 
of  light  and  harmony,  bounded  inevitably  by 
the  approaching  date  of  marriage.  It  had 
been,  he  recalled  on  some  one  of  those  occasions 
of  social  approval  by  which  it  appeared  engage 
ments  in  the  Best  Society  proceeded,  that  he 
had  sat  thus,  waiting  until  the  clock  ticked  off 
the  moment  when  he  might  properly  join  her, 
sat  so  full  of  the  sense  of  her  that  for  the  instant 
he  accepted  her  unannounced  appearance  at 
the  darkened  doorway  as  the  mere  extension  of 


The  Lovely  Lady 

his  white-heated  fancy.  The  next  moment  as 
she  charged  into  the  circle  of  the  lamp  he  saw 
that  the  umbra  of  some  strange  electrical  excite 
ment  hung  about  her.  It  fairly  crackled  be 
tween  them  as  he  rose  hurriedly  to  his  feet. 
"You  have  come,  Eunice!  You  have 


come 

But  he  saw  well  enough  what  she  had  come 
for.  She  laid  the  case  on  the  table,  but  as  she 
tugged  impatiently  at  her  glove,  the  fringe  of 
her  wrap  caught  the  clasp  of  it  and  scattered 
the  jewels  on  the  cloth.  She  tried  then  to  put 
the  ring  beside  them,  but  her  hand  shook  so 
that  it  fell  and  rolled  upon  the  floor  behind 
them.  Peter  picked  it  up  quietly,  but  he  did 
not  offer  it  to  her  hand  again. 

"I  have  come,"  said  Eunice,  "to  say  what 
in  my  mother's  house  I  was  afraid  of  being  inter 
rupted  in  saying;  what  you  must  see,  what  my 
mother  won't  see." 

"I  see  you  are  greatly  excited  about  some 
thing!" 

"I'm  not,  I'm  not.  .  .  .  That  is  .  .  . 
I  am,  but  not  in  the  way  you  think,"  she  was 
sharp  with  insistence;  "that  is  what  you  and 


242  The  Lovely  Lady 

mother  always  say,  that  I'm  nervous  or  excited, 
and  all  the  time  you  don't  see." 

"What  is  it  I  don't  see,  Eunice?" 

"That  I  can't  stand  it,  that  I  can't  go  on 
with  it,  that  it  is  dreadful  to  me, —  dreadful!  " 

"What  is  dreadful?" 

"Everything,  being  engaged  —  being  mar 
ried  and  giving  up  .  .  ."  It  was  fairly 
racked  out  of  her  by  some  inward  torture  to 
which  he  had  not  the  key. 

"Of  course,  Eunice,  if  you  don't  wish  to  be 

married  so  soon Peter  was  all  at  sea. 

He  brought  a  chair  for  her,  and  perceiving  that 
he  would  go  on  standing  as  long  as  she  did,  she 
sat  upon  the  edge  of  it  but  kept  both  the  arms 
as  a  measure  of  defence.  The  slight  act  of 
doing  something  for  her  restored  him  for  the 
moment  to  reality;  he  bent  over  her.  "I've 

never  wanted  to  hurry  you,  dearest It 

shall  be  when  you  say."  She  put  up  her  hands 
suddenly  with  a  shivering  movement. 

"Oh,  never,  never  at  all;  never  to  you!" 

Peter  could  feel  that  working  its  track  of 
desolation  inward,  but  the  first  instinctive 
movement  of  his  surface  was  to  close  over  the 


The  Lovely  Lady  243 

wound.  He  took  it  as  he  knew  he  could  only 
take  it:  as  the  explosive  crisis  of  the  virginal 
resistance  which  he  remembered  he  had  heard 
came  to  girls  when  marriage  loomed  upon  them. 
He  took  a  turn  down  the  room  to  steady  himself, 
praying  dumbly  for  the  right  word. 

"It  isn't  as  if  I  didn't  respect  you"  —  she 
was  eager  in  explanation,  hurried  and  stumb 
ling —  "as  if  I  didn't  know  how  good  you  are 
.  .  .  it  is  only,  because  we  are  so  different." 

"How  different,  Eunice?" 

"Oh  .  .  .  older,  I  suppose."  She  grew 
quieter;  it  appeared  on  the  whole  they  were  get 
ting  on.  "I  care  for  so  many  things,  you  know 
—  dancing  —  and  bridge  —  young  things  — 
and  you  are  always  reading  and  reading.  Oh! 
I  couldn't  stand  it." 

So  it  was  out  now.  She  was  jealous  of  his 
books,  a  little.  Well,  he  had  been  self-ab 
sorbed.  It  occurred  to  him  dimly  that  the  thing 
to  have  done  if  he  had  known  a  little  more 
about  women,  had  practised  with  them,  was  to 
have  provoked  her  at  this  point  to  the  tears 
which  should  have  sealed  the  renewal  of  his 
claim  to  her.  What  he  said  was,  very  quietly : 


244  The  Lovely  Lady 

"Of  course  I  never  meant,  Eunice,  that  you 
shouldn't  have  everything  you  want." 

"Oh,"  she  seemed  to  have  found  a  suffocat 
ing  quality  in  his  gentleness,  against  which  she 
struck  out  with  drowning  gestures,  "if  you 
could  only  understand  what  it  would  mean  to 
me  never  to  have  anybody  I  liked  to  talk  to 
about  things, —  anybody  I  liked  to  be  with  all 
the  time!"  She  was  choked  and  aghast  at  the 
enormity  of  it. 

"But  I  thought  .  .  ."  Peter  was  not 
able  to  go  on  with  that.  "Isn't  there  any 
body  you  like  to  be  with,  Eunice?" 

"Yes,"  said  Eunice.     "Burton  Henderson." 

Mutinous  and  bright  she  looked  at  him  out 
of  the  chair  with  a  hand  on  either  arm  of  it 
poised  for  flight  or  defence.  After  an  interval 
Peter  heard  his  own  voice  out  of  a  fog  rising 
to  the  conventional  utterance. 

"Of  course,  if  you  have  learned  to  love 
him " 

"I've  loved  him  all  the  time."  She  was  so 
bent  on  making  this  clear  to  him  that  she  was 
careless  what  went  down  before  her.  "From 
the  very  beginning,"  she  said,  "but  he  had  so 


The  Lovely  Lady  245 

little  money,  and  mother  ...  I  promised 
you,  I  know,  but  it's  not  as  if  I  ever  said  I  loved 
you." 

She  should  have  spared  him  that!  He  had 
not  put  out  a  hand  to  hold  her  that  he  should 
be  so  pierced  through  with  needless  cruelty. 
But  she  was  bent  on  clearing  her  skirts  of 
him. 

"Do  you  think,"  she  expostulated  to  his 
stricken  silence,  "that  if  I'd  cared  in  the  least 
I'd  have  made  it  so  easy  for  you?  Can't  you 
see  that  it  was  all  arranged,  that  we  jumped 
at  you?"  All  the  time  she  sat  opposite  him, 
thrusting  swift  and  hard,  there  was  no  diminu 
tion  of  her  appealing  beauty,  the  flaming  rose 
of  her  cheeks  and  the  soft,  dark  flare  of  her 
hair.  As  if  she  felt  how  it  belied  at  every 
turn  the  quality  of  her  unyielding  intention, 
her  voice  railed  against  him  feverishly.  "I 
suppose  you  think  I'm  mercenary,  and  I  thought 
I  was,  too.  You  don't  know  how  people 
like  us  need  money  sometimes.  All  the  things 
we  like  cost  so  —  all  the  real  things.  And  poor 
mamma,  she  needed  things;  she'd  never  had 
them,  and  I  thought  that  I  could  stand  being 


246  The  Lovely  Lady 

married  to  you  if  I  could  get  them  that  way. 
.  .  .  Maybe  I  could,  you  know,  if  you'd 
been  different,  more  like  us  I  mean.  But  there 
was  such  a  lot  you  didn't  understand  .  .  . 
things  you  hadn't  even  heard  about.  I  found 
that  out  as  soon  as  we  were  engaged.  There 
wasn't  a  thing  between  us;  not  a  thing." 

It  poured  scalding  hot  on  Peter's  sensitive 
surfaces:  made  sensitive  by  the  way  in  which 
even  in  this  hour  her  beauty  moved  him.  He 
felt  tears  starting  in  his  heart  and  prayed  they 
might  not  come  to  his  face.  "So  you  see  as  we 
hadn't  anything  in  common  it  would  be  better 
for  us  not  to  go  on  with  it  even"  —  she  broke 
a  little  at  this  —  "even  if  there  hadn't  been 
anybody  else.  You  see  that,  don't  you?"  She 
dared  him  to  deny  it  rather  than  begged  the 
concession  of  him  as  she  gathered  herself  for 
departure. 

"I  see  that.'* 

"You  never  really  belonged  to  our  set,  you 

know "  She  rose  now  and  he  rose  blindly 

with  her;  he  hoped  that  she  was  done,  but  there 
was  something  still.  "It  hasn't  been  easy  to 
go  through  with  it.  ...  Mother  isn't 


The  Lovely  Lady  247 

going  to  make  it  any  easier.  It's  natural  for 
her  to  want  me  to  have  everything  that  money 
would  mean,  and  I  thought  that  if  you  would 
just  keep  away  from  her  .  .  .  you  owe 
something  to  Burton  and  me  for  what  we've 
been  through,  I  think  .  .  .  just  leave  it 
to  me  to  manage  in  my  own  way.  .  .  ." 
"I  shall  never  trouble  you,  Eunice." 
He  came  close  to  her  then  to  open  the  door, 
seeing  that  she  was  to  leave  him,  and  he  saw 
too  that  she  had  suffered,  was  at  the  very  ebb 
and  stony  bottom  of  emotion  as  she  hung  for 
the  moment  in  the  doorway  searching  for  some 
winged  shaft  of  separation  that  should  cut  her 
off  from  the  remotest  implication  of  the  situa 
tion.  She  found  at  last  the  barbedest.  All 
the  succeeding  time  after  he  closed  the  door  on 
her  was  marked  for  Peter,  not  by  the  ticked 
moments  but  by  successive  waves  of  anguish  as 
that  poisoned  arrow  worked  its  way  to  his 
secret  places. 

"It  isn't  as  if  I  had  ever  loved  you;  I  owe  it 
to  Mr.  Henderson  to  remind  you  that  I  never 
said  I  did.  .  .  .  You  know  I  never  liked 
to  have  you  kiss  me." 


£48  The  Lovely  Lady 

He  had  in  the  months  that  succeeded  to  that 
last  sight  of  Eunice  Goodward,  moments  of 
unbearably  wanting  to  go  to  her  to  try  for  a 
little  to  ease  his  torment  in  a  more  tender 
recognition  of  it  —  days  when  he  would  have 
taken  from  her,  gratefully  even  if  she  had  fooled 
him  and  he  had  seen  her  do  it,  whatever  would 
have  saved  him  from  the  certainty  that  never 
even  in  those  first  exquisite  moments  had  she 
been  his.  The  sharp  edge  of  her  young  suf 
ficiency  had  lopped  off  the  right  limb  of  his 
manhood.  Never,  even  in  his  dreams,  if  life 
had  allowed  him  to  dream  again,  should  he  be 
able  to  see  himself  in  any  other  guise  than  the 
meagre,  austere  front  which  his  obligation  to  his 
mother  and  Ellen  had  obliged  him  to  present 
to  destiny.  She  had  beggared  him  of  all  those 
aptitudes  for  passionate  relations,  by  the  faith 
in  which  he  had  kept  himself  inwardly  alive. 
The  capacity  for  loving  died  in  him  with 
the  knowledge  of  not  being  able  to  be 
loved. 

Out  of  the  anaesthesia  of  exhaustion  from 
which  Italy  had  revived  him,  it  rolled  back 
upon  him  that  by  just  the  walled  imper- 


The  Lovely  Lady  249 

viousness  that  shut  Eunice  Goodward  from 
the  appreciation  of  his  passion,  he  was  pre 
vented  now  from  Savilla  Dassonville. 


XI 


It  was  odd,  then,  having  come  to  this  con 
clusion  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  that  when  he 
joined  the  ladies  in  the  morning  he  should  have 
experienced  a  sinking  pang  in  not  being  able 
any  longer  to  be  sure  what  Miss  Dassonville 
thought  of  him.  There  was  in  her  manner,  as 
she  thanked  him  for  the  flowers,  nothing  to 
ruffle  the  surface  of  the  bright,  impersonal  com 
panionship  which  she  had  afforded  him  for 
weeks  past. 

The  occasion  which  brought  them  together 
was  an  agreement  entered  into  some  days  ear 
lier,  to  go  and  look  at  palaces,  and  as  they 
turned  past  the  Saluti  to  the  Grand  Canal,  he 
found  himself  wondering  if  there  had  not  been  a 
touch  of  fatuity  in  his  reading  of  the  incident 
of  the  morning  before.  He  had  gone  so  far  in 
the  night  as  to  think  even  of  leaving  Venice, 
and  saw  himself  now  forlornly  wishing  for 


250  The  Lovely  Lady 

some  renewal  of  yesterday's  mood  to  excuse 
him  from  the  caddishness  that  such  a  flight 
implied. 

It  came  out  a  little  later,  perhaps,  when 
after  traversing  many  high  and  resounding 
marble  halls,  with  a  great  many  rooms  opening 
into  one  another  in  a  way  that  suggested  rather 
the  avoidance  of  privacy  than  its  security, 
they  found  themselves  in  one  of  those  gardens 
of  shut  delight  of  which  the  exteriors  of  Vene 
tian  houses  give  so  little  intimation. 

As  she  went  about  from  bough  to  bough  of 
the  neglected  roses,  turned  all  inward  as  if  they 
took  their  florescence  from  that  still  lighted 
human  passion  which  had  found  its  release  and 
centre  there,  her  face  glowed  for  the  moment 
with  the  colour  of  her  quick  sympathies.  She 
turned  it  on  him  with  an  unconscious,  tender 
confidence,  which  not  to  meet  seemed  to  Peter, 
in  that  gentle  enclosure  full  of  warmth  and 
fragrance,  to  assume  the  proportions  of  a  be 
trayal. 

He  did  meet  it  there  as  she  came  back  to 
him  for  the  last  look  from  the  marble  balus 
trade  by  which  they  had  descended,  covering 


The  Lovely  Lady  251 

her  hand,  there  resting,  lingeringly  with  his 
own.  He  was  awakened  only  to  the  implica 
tion  of  this  movement  by  the  discovery  that 
she  had  deeply  and  exquisitely  blushed. 

It  was  a  further  singularity  in  view  of  the 
conviction  with  which  Peter  had  come  through 
the  night,  that  the  mood  of  protectingness 
which  the  girl  provoked  in  him  should  have 
multiplied  itself  in  pointing  out  to  him  how 
many  ways,  if  he  had  not  made  up  his  mind 
not  to  marry  her  at  all,  such  a  marriage  could 
be  made  to  serve  its  primal  uses.  She  had 
turned  up  her  cuff  to  trail  her  hand  overside 
as  they  slid  through  the  lucent  water,  and  the 
pretty  feminine  curve  of  it  had  brought  to  mind 
what  the  Princess  had  told  him  of  the  shirt 
waists  she  made  herself.  He  decided  that  she 
made  them  very  well.  But  she  was  too  thin 
for  their  severity  —  and  if  he  married  her  he 
would  have  insisted  on  her  wearing  them  now 
and  then  as  a  tender  way  to  prevent  her  sus 
pecting  that  it  was  on  their  account  he  had 
thought  of  not  marrying  her.  The  revealed 
whiteness  of  her  wrist,  the  intimacy  of  her 
relaxed  posture,  for  though  her  mind  had 


The  Lovely  Lady 

played  into  his  as  freely  as  a  child  in  a  meadow, 
she  had  been  always,  as  regards  her  person,  a 
little  prim  with  him,  had  lent  to  their  errand 
of  house  visiting  a  personal  note  in  which  it 
was  absurdly  apt  for  them  to  have  run  across 
Captain  Dunham  of  the  Merrythought  at  the 
door  of  the  Consulate.  Mr.  Weatherall  had 
some  papers  which  Lessing  had  sent  him  to 
acknowledge  there,  and  it  was  a  piece  of  the 
morning's  performance,  when  he  had  come  back 
from  that  business,  to  find  that  the  meeting  had 
taken  on  —  from  some  mutual  discovery  of  the 
captain's  and  Mrs.  Merrithew's  of  a  cousin's 
wife's  sister  who  had  married  one  of  the  Apple- 
gates  who  was  a  Dunham  on  the  mother's  side 
—  quite  the  aspect  of  a  family  party.  It  came 
in  the  end  to  the  four  of  them  going  off  at 
Peter's  invitation  to  have  lunch  together  in  a 
cafe  overhanging  the  calle.  He  told  himself 
afterward  that  he  would  not  have  done  it  if  he 
had  recalled  in  time  the  friendly  seaman's 
romantic  appreciation  of  the  situation  between 
himself  and  Miss  Dassonville.  He  saw  himself 
so  intrigued  by  it  that,  by  the  time  lunch  was 
over,  he  felt  himself  in  a  position  which  to  his 


The  Lovely  Lady  253 

own  sensitiveness,  demanded  that  he  must  im 
mediately  leave  Venice  or  propose  to  Miss 
Dassonville.  To  see  the  way  he  was  going  and 
to  go  on  in  it,  had  for  him  the  fascination  of  the 
abyss.  He  caught  himself  in  the  act  even  of 
trying  to  fix  Miss  Dassonville's  eye  to  include 
her  by  complicity  in  the  beguilement  of  the 
captain,  a  business  which  she  seemed  to  have 
undertaken  on  her  own  account  on  quite  other 
grounds.  He  perceived  with  a  kind  of  pride 
for  her  that  she  had  the  ways  of  elderly  sea 
going  gentlemen  by  heart.  It  was  something 
even  if  she  had  failed  to  charm  Peter,  that  she 
shouldn't  be  found  quite  wanting  in  it  by  other 
men. 

When  they  had  put  him  back  aboard  of  the 
Merrythought  they  had  come  to  such  a  pitch 
among  them  all,  that  as  the  captain  leaned 
above  the  rail  to  launch  an  invitation,  he  ad 
dressed  it  to  Miss  Dassonville,  as,  if  not  quite  the 
giver  of  the  feast,  the  mistress  of  the  situation. 

"When  are  you  coming  to  lunch  with  me?" 
demanded  the  captain. 

"Never!"  declared  Miss  Dassonville.  "It 
would  be  quite  out  of  the  question  to  have  hot 


254  The  Lovely  Lady 

cakes  for  luncheon,  and  I  absolutely  refuse  to 
come  for  anything  less." 

"There's  something  quite  as  good,"  asserted 
the  captain,  "that  I'll  bet  you  haven't  had  in 
as  long." 

"Better  than  hot  cakes?"  Miss  Dassonville 
was  skeptical. 

"Pie,"  said  the  captain. 

"Oh,  Pie'99  in  mock  ecstasy.  "Well,  I'd 
come  for  pie,"  and  with  that  they  parted. 

Peter  had  plenty  of  time  for  considering  where 
he  found  himself  that  afternoon,  for  the  ladies 
were  bent  on  a  shopping  expedition  on  which 
they  had  rather  pointedly  given  him  to  under 
stand  he  was  not  expected  to  attend.  He  had 
tried  that  once,  and  had  hit  upon  the  excellent 
device,  in  face  of  the  outrageous  prices  proposed 
by  the  dealers,  of  having  them  settle  upon  what 
they  would  like  and  sending  Luigi  back  to  bar 
gain  for  it.  All  of  which  would  have  gone  very 
well  if  Mrs.  Merrithew,  in  the  delight  of  his 
amazing  success,  had  not  gone  back  to  the  shop 
the  next  day  to  duplicate  his  purchases.  Peter 
had  never  heard  what  occurred  on  that  occasion, 
but  he  had  noticed  that  they  never  talked  in  his 


The  Lovely  Lady  255 

presence  of  buying  anything  again.  Bloom- 
bury  people,  he  should  have  remembered,  had 
perfectly  definite  notions  about  having  things 
done  for  them. 

He  walked,  therefore,  on  this  afternoon  in  the 
Public  Gardens  and  tried  to  reconstruct  in  their 
original  force  the  reasons  for  his  not  marrying 
Savilla  Dassonville.  They  had  come  upon 
him  overwhelmingly  in  the  recrudescence  of 
memory,  reasons  rooted  very  simply  in  his 
man's  hunger  for  the  lift,  the  dizzying  emi 
nence  of  desire.  He  liked  the  girl  well  enough 
but  he  did  not  want  her  as  he  had  wanted 
Eunice  Goodward,  as  he  wanted  expansively 
at  this  moment  to  want  something,  some 
body  —  who  was  not  Eunice  —  he  was  per 
fectly  clear  on  this  point  —  but  should  be  in  a 
measure  all  she  stood  for  to  him.  He  had 
renewed  in  the  night,  though  in  so  short  a  time, 
not  less  acutely,  all  the  wounded  misery  of  what 
Eunice  had  forced  upon  him.  He  was  there 
between  the  dark  and  dawn,  and  here  again  in 
the  cool  of  the  garden,  to  taste  the  full  bitter 
ness  of  the  conviction  that  he  was  not  good 
enough  to  be  loved.  He  was  not  to  be  helped 


256  The  Lovely  Lady 

from  that  by  the  thought,  which  came  hurry 
ing  on  the  heels  of  the  other,  that  Savilla 
Dassonville  loved  him.  He  had  a  moment  of 
almost  hating  her  as  she  seemed  to  plead  with 
him,  by  no  motion  of  her  own  he  was  obliged 
to  confess  for  those  raptures,  leaping  fires, 
winged  rushes,  which  should  have  been  his  por 
tion  of  their  situation. 

He  hated  her  for  the  certainty  that  if 
he  went  away  now  quietly  without  saying 
anything,  it  would  be  to  visit  on  her  undeserv 
edly  all  that  had  come  to  him  from  Eunice. 
For  she  would  know;  she  would  not,  as  he  had 
been,  be  blind  to  the  point  of  requiring  the 
spoken  word.  If  he  left  her  now  it  would  be  to 
the  unavoidable  knowledge  that,  as  the  Princess 
had  said  of  him,  he  would  be  running  away. 
He  would  be  running  from  the  evidences  of  a 
moneyless,  self-abnegating  youth,  from  the 
plain  surfaces  of  efficiency  and  womanliness, 
not  hedged  about  and  enfolded,  but  pushed  to 
the  extremity  of  its  use.  He  had,  however, 
when  he  had  taken  that  in  from  every  side,  the 
grace  to  be  ashamed  of  it. 

He  was  ashamed,  too,  of  finding  himself  at 


The  Lovely  Lady  257 

their  next  meeting  involved  in  a  wordless  appeal 
to  be  helped  from  his  state  to  some  larger 
grounds.  If  the  girl  had  but  appealed  to  him  he 
could  have  done  with  a  fine  generosity  what  he 
felt  was  beyond  him  to  invite.  He  could  have 
married  Savilla  Dassonville  to  be  kind  to  her; 
what  he  didn't  enjoy  was  putting  it  on  a  basis 
of  her  being  kind  to  him. 

Miss  Dassonville,  however,  afforded  him  no 
help  beyond  the  negative  one  of  not  talking 
too  much  and  taking  perhaps  a  shade  less  in 
terest  in  Venice.  They  had  two  quiet  days 
together  in  which  it  was  evident,  whatever 
Peter  settled  with  himself  as  to  his  relation  to 
the  girl,  it  had  taken  on  for  Mrs.  Merrithew 
the  pointedness  known  in  Bloombury  as  "atten 
tions."  She  paid  in  to  the  possibilities  of  the 
situation  the  tribute  of  her  absence  for  long  ses 
sions  in  which,  so  far  as  Peter  could  discover, 
the  situation  rather  fell  to  the  ground.  It  began 
to  appear  that  he  had  missed  as  he  was  doomed 
with  women,  the  crucial  instant,  and  was  to 
come  out  of  this  as  of  other  encounters,  empty. 
And  then  quite  suddenly  the  girl  put  out  a 
hand  to  him. 


258  The  Lovely  Lady 

It  was  along  about  the  end  of  the  afternoon 
they  had  come  out  of  the  church  of  Saint 
George  the  Greater,  which  as  being  most  acces 
sible  had  been  left  to  the  latter  end  of  their  ex 
plorations.  Mrs.  Merrithew  had  just  sent 
Giuseppe  back  for  a  shawl  which  she  had 
dropped  in  the  cloister.  They  sat  rocking  in 
the  gondola  looking  toward  the  fairy  arcade  of 
the  ducal  palace  and  the  pillars  of  the  saints, 
and  suddenly  Miss  Dassonville  spoke  to  excuse 
her  quietness. 

"I  must  look  all  I  can,"  she  said;  "we  are 
leaving  the  day  after  to-morrow." 

If  she  had  retired  behind  Mrs.  Merrithew's 
comfortable  breadth  in  order  to  deliver  her 
shot  the  more  effectively,  she  missed  seeing  how 
plumply  it  landed  in  the  midst  of  Peter's 
defences  and  scattered  them. 

"Leaving  Venice? "  he  said.  "Leaving  me?  " 
It  took  a  moment  for  that  fact,  dropping  the 
depth  of  his  indecision,  to  show  him  where  he 
stood.  "But  I  thought  you  understood,"  he 
protested,  "that  I  wanted  you  to  stay  .  .  . 
to  stay  with  me.  .  .  ."  He  leaned  across 
Mrs.  Merrithew's  broad  lap  in  a  great  fear  of 


The  Lovely  Lady  259 

not  being  sufficiently  plain.  .„:  "Make  her  under 
stand,"  he  said,  "that  I  want  her  to  stay 
always." 

"I  guess,"  said  Mrs.  Merrithew,  a  dry  smile 
twinkling  in  the  placidity  of  her  countenance, 
"you'd  better  take  me  right  home  first,  and 
then  you  can  explain  to  her  yourself." 

XII 

"And  you  are  sure,"  asked  Peter,  "that  you 
are  not  going  to  mind  my  being  so  much  older?  " 

"Oh,  I'm  going  to  mind  it:  There  will  be 
times  when  I  shall  be  afraid  of  not  living  up  to 
it.  But  the  most  part  of  my  minding  will  be, 
since  you  are  so  much  better  acquainted  with 
life  than  I  am,  that  in  any  matter  in  which  we 
shouldn't  agree  I  shall  be  so  much  the  more 
sure  of  your  being  right.  It's  going  to  be  a 
great  help  to  us,  having  something  like  that  to 
go  by." 

"Oh,"  said  Peter,  "y°u  put  it  very  prettily  9 
my  dear." 

He  was  aware  as  soon  as  [he  had  said  it, 
that  she  would  have  a  way  always  of  putting 


260  The  Lovely  Lady 

things  prettily,  and  that  not  for  the  sake  of  any 
prettiness,  but  because  it  was  so  intrinsically 
she  saw  them.  It  would  make  everything  much 
simpler  that  she  was  always  sufficiently  to  be 
believed. 

"It  isn't,  you  know,"  she  went  on,  "as  if  I 
should  have  continually  to  prop  up  my  confi 
dence  with  my  affection  as  I  might  with  a  man  of 
less  experience.  Oh!"  she  threw  out  her  arms 
with  a  beautiful  upward  motion,  "you  give 
me  so  much  room,  Peter." 

"Well,  more  than  I  would  give  you  at  this 
moment  if  we  were  not  in  a  gondola  on  a  public 
highway ! " 

He  amazed  himself  at  the  felicity  with  which 
during  the  three  days  of  their  engagement  he 
had  been  able  to  take  that  note  with  her,  still 
more  at  the  entertainment  of  her  shy  response. 
It  gave  him  a  new  and  enlarged  perception  of 
himself  as  a  man  acquainted  with  passion. 
All  that  had  been  withheld  from  him,  by  the 
mere  experience  of  missing,  he  was  able  to  bestow 
with  largesse.  The  witchery  and  charm  that 
had  been  done  on  him,  he  worked  —  if  he  were 
but  to  put  his  arm  about  her  now,  to  draw  her 


The  Lovely  Lady 

so  that  her  head  rested  on  his  shoulder,  with  a 
certain  pressure,  he  could  feel  all  her  being 
flower  delicately  to  that  beguilement.  He  had 
promised  himself,  when  he  had  her  promise, 
that  she  should  never  miss  anything,  and  he 
had  a  certain  male  satisfaction  in  being  able 
to  make  good.  What  he  did  now,  in  deference 
to  their  being  as  they  were  in  the  full  light  of 
day  and  the  plying  traffic,  was  to  say: 

"Then  if  I  were  to  put  it  to  you  in  the  light 
of  my  superior  experience,  that  I  considered 
it  best  for  us  to  be  married  right  away,  I 
shouldn't  expect  you  to  contradict  me." 

"Oh,  Peter!" 

"We  can't  keep  Mrs.  Merrithew  on  forever, 
you  know,"  he  suggested,  "and  we've  such  a 
lot  to  do  —  there's  Greece  and  Egypt  and  the 
Holy  Land  - 

"But  can  we  —  be  married  in  Venice,  I 
mean?" 

"That,"  said  Peter,  "is  what  I'm  waiting 
your  permission  to  find  out." 

He  spent  the  greater  part  of  the  afternoon  at 
that  business  without,  however,  getting  satisfac 
tion.  "  Marriage  in  Italy,"  the  consul  told  him, 


The  Lovely  Lady 

"is  a  sort  of  world- without-end  affair.  Even  if 
you  cable  for  the  necessary  papers  it  will  be  a 
matter  of  a  month  or  six  weeks  before  the  cere 
mony  could  be  accomplished.  You'll  do  better 
to  go  to  Switzerland  with  the  young  lady." 

For  the  present  he  went  back  to  her  with 
a  list  of  the  required  certificates,  and  an 
other  item  which  he  brought  out  later  as  a 
corrective  for  the  disappointment  for  the  first. 

"My  birth  and  baptismal  certificates?  I 
haven't  any,"  said  Miss  Dassonville,  "and  I 
don't  believe  you  have  either;  and  I  don't 
want  to  go  to  Switzerland." 

"No,"  said  Peter,  "even  that] takes  three 
weeks." 

"Why  can't  he  marry  us  himself  —  the 
consul,  I  mean?  I  thought  wherever  the  flag 
went  up  was  territory  of  the  United  States." 

"If  you  will  come  along  with  me  in  the  morr- 
ing  we  can  ask  him,"  Peter  suggested,  and  on 
the  way  there  he  loosed  for  her  benefit  the 
second  item  of  his  yesterday's  discovery. 
They  slid  past  the  facade  of  a  certain  palace 
and  she  kissed  the  tip  of  her  finger  to  it  lightly. 
"It's  as  if  we  had  a  secret  between  us,"  she  ex- 


The  Lovely  Lady  263 

plained,  "the  secret  of  the  garden.  Besides, 
I  shall  always  love  it  because  it  was  there  I  first 
suspected  that  you  —  cared.  When  did  you 
begin  to  care,  Peter?" 

"Since  before  I  can  remember.  Would  you 
like  to  live  in  it?" 

"In  this  palace?     Here  in  Venice?" 

"It's  for  rent,"he  told  her;"the  consul  has  it." 

"But  could  we  afford  it?" 

"Well,"  said  Peter,  "if  you  like  it  so  much, 
at  the  rate  things  are  here,  we  can  pull  it  up  by 
the  roots  and  take  it  back  to  Bloombury." 

They  lost  themselves  in  absurd  speculations 
as  to  the  probable  effect  on  the  villagers  of  that, 
and  so  failed  to  take  note  as  their  gondola 
nosed  into  the  green  shadow  under  the  con 
sulate,  of  the*  Merry  thought's  launch  aihwart  the 
landing,  until  the  captain  himself  hailed  them. 

"This  port,"  he  declared,  "is  under  em 
bargo.  I  have  been  waiting  here  since  half 
tide  and  there's  nothing  doing.  Somebody's 
in  there  chewing  red  tape,  but  I  don't  calculate 
to  let  anybody  else  have  a  turn  at  it  until  I  get 
my  bit  wound  up  an'  tied  in  a  knot.  Now  don't 
tell  me  you've  got  business  in  there?" 


264  The  Lovely  Lady 

"We  want  to  find  out  something." 

"Well,  when  ye  find  it,  it  won't  be  what  ye 
want,"  asserted  the  captain  gloomily.  "It 
never  is  in  these  Dago  countries."  He  mo 
tioned  his  own  boat  aside  from  the  landing.  "  If 
ye  want  to  go  inside  and  set  on  a  chair,"  he 
suggested,  "I'll  not  hender  ye.  I  like  the  water 
best  myself.  I  hope  your  business  will  stand 
waiting." 

"To  everybody  but  ourselves,"  said  Peter. 
"You  see,"  he  caught  the  permission  lightly 
from  Miss  Dassonville's  eyes,  "we  want  to  get 
married." 

"Ho!"  said  the  captain,  chirking  up.  "I 
could  'a'  told  ye  that  the  fust  time  I  laid  eyes 
on  ye.  But  I'll  tell  ye  this :  ye  can't  do  nothing 
in  a  hurry  in  this  country.  The  only  place 
where  a  man  can  do  things  up  as  soon  as  he 
thinks  of  'em  is  on  the  blue  water.  We  don't 
have  red  tape  on  shipboard,  I  can  tell  you. 
The  skipper's  the  law  and  the  government." 

"Could  you  marry  people?" 

"Well,  I  ain't  to  say  in  the  habit  of  it,  but 
it's  the  law  that  I  could." 

"Then  if  we  get  tangled  up  with  the  consul," 


The  Lovely  Lady  265 

said  Peter,  "we'll  have  to  fall  back  on  you," 
and  they  took  it  as  an  excellent  piece  of  fooling 
which  they  were  later  to  come  back  to  as  a 
matter  of  serious  resort. 

44 Of  course,"  said  the  consul,  "I  could  marry 
you  and  it  would  be  legal  if  you  chose  to  count 
it  so  at  home,  but  if  you  are  thinking  of  taking 
a  house  here  and  of  making  an  extended  resi 
dence  I  shouldn't  advise  it.  As  to  Captain 
Dunham's  suggestion,  it's  not  wholly  a  bad 
one.  Not  being  in  Italy,  the  Italians  can't 
take  exception  to  it,  and  if  it  is  properly 
witnessed  and  recorded  at  home  it  ought  to 
stand." 

They  couldn't  of  course  take  it  in  all  at  once 
that  they  were  simply  to  sail  out  there  into  the 
ethereal  blueness  and  to  come  back  from  it  with 
the  right  to  live  together.  However,  it  made 
for  a  great  unanimity  of  opinion  as  they  talked 
it  over  on  the  way  home,  that,  since  so  much 
was  lacking  from  Peter's  marriage  that  he  had 
dreamed  went  to  it,  and  so  much  more  had 
come  into  Savilla's  than  she  had  dared  to 
imagine,  it  mattered  very  little  what  else  was 
added  or  left  out. 


266  The  Lovely  Lady 

"I  suppose,"  suggested  Miss  Dassonville, 
"Mrs.  Merrithew  will  think  it  dreadful."  But 
as  it  turned  out  Mrs.  Merrithew  thought  very 
well  of  it. 

"On  a  United  States  boat  with  a  United 
States  minister  —  there  is  one  here  I've  found 
out  —  it  seems  a  lot  safer  than  to  trust  to  these 
foreign  ways.  If  you  was  to  be  married  in 
Italian  I  should  never  be  certain  you  wouldn't 
wake  up  some  morning  and  find  yourself  not 
married.  And  then  how  should  I  feel!"  As 
to  the  palace  plan,  she  threw  herself  into  it  with 
heavy  alacrity.  "I  s'pose  I've  got  to  see  you 
through,"  she  said,  "and  it  will  give  me  some 
thing  to  think  about.  I  don't  suppose  you 
have  any  intention  that  way,  but  an  engaged 
couple  isn't  very  good  company." 

It  transpired  that  the  Merrythought  would 
put  out  to  the  high  seas  on  the  twenty-second, 
and  it  was  in  the  flutter  of  their  practical 
adjustments  to  meet  this  date  that  Peter  found 
the  ten  days  of  his  engagement  move  so  swiftly; 
to  engage  servants,  to  interview  tradespeople, 
to  prune  the  neglected  garden  —  it  was  Sa vil 
la's  notion  that  they  should  do  this  themselves 


The  Lovely  Lady  267 

—  all  the  stir  of  domestic  life  made  so  many 
points  of  advantage  to  support  him  above  that 
dryness  of  despair  from  which  he  had  moments 
of  feeling  himself  all  too  hardly  rescued.  He  had 
come  up  out  of  it  sufficiently  by  the  help  that 
Italy  afforded,  to  glimpse  once  more  the  coun 
try  of  his  dreams,  only  by  this  act  of  his  mar 
riage  to  turn  his  back  on  it  forever.  Savilla 
Das  son  vi  lie  was  a  dear  little  thing;  if  it  came  to 
that,  a  revered  and  valued  thing,  but  she  was  not, 
he  had  never  pretended  it,  the  Lovely  Lady,  and 
the  door  that  shut  them  in  as  man  and  wife  was 
to  shut  her  forever  out  of  his  life.  And  yet 
though  this  was  his  accepted,  his  official  posi 
tion,  it  was  remarkable  even  to  himself  how 
much  less  frequently  as  the  preparations  for 
his  marriage  went  forward,  he  found  himself 
obliged  to  fall  back  upon  it;  how  much  more  he 
projected  himself  into  his  future  as  the  adored 
and  protecting  male.  He  recalled  in  this  con 
nection  that  the  Princess  had  said  to  him  that 
he  should  visit  his  House  no  more,  and  it  was 
part  of  the  proof  of  the  notion  he  entertained 
toward  himself  as  a  man  done  with  the  imagi 
native  life,  that  he  accepted  it  with  no  more  fuss 


268  The  Lovely  Lady 

about  it.  He  had  in  fact  his  mind's  eye  on  a 
piece  of  ground  which  Lessing  could  buy  for 
him,  on  the  river,  an  hour  from  the  city,  where 
he  could  manage  for  Savilla  at  least,  a  generous 
substitute  for  dreams,  and  a  situation  for  him 
self  for  which  he  began  to  discover  more  appe 
tite  than  he  would  have  believed.  It  was  likely, 
he  thought,  that  he  would  himself  take  a  turn 
at  planning  the  garden. 

It  was  very  early  in  the  morning  when  the 
wedding  party  which  had  been  reinforced  by 
the  consul,  the  mistress  of  Casa  Frolli,  and  the 
minister,  who  had  turned  out  to  be  exactly  of 
Mrs.  Merrithew's  persuasion,  went  aboard 
the  Merrythought,  blooming  out  amazingly 
in  bunting  and  roses  for  the  occasion. 
The  morning  blueness  had  drained  out  from 
the  city  and  stained  the  waters  eastward  as 
they  put  out  between  the  red  and  yellow  sails 
of  the  fishing  fleet.  They  saw  the  cypress- 
towered  islands  of  romance  melt  in  the  morning 
haze.  The  steam  launch  which  was  to  take 
them  ashore  again  ploughed  alongside,  and 
there  was  a  pleasant  sort  of  home  smell  from 
the  cook's  quarters. 


The  Lovely  Lady  269 

Peter  sat  forward  with  the  bride's  hand 
tucked  under  his  arm  and  presently  he  heard 
her  laughing  softly,  delightedly. 

"Peter,  do  you  know  what  that  is,  that  good 
smell  I  mean?" 

"What  do  you  think  it  is?" 

"It's  pie  baking.  Truly,  don't  you  think 
I'm  enough  of  a  housewife  to  know  that?" 

"I  know  you're  every  thing  you  ought  to  be." 

"It  is  pie,  there's  no  doubt  about  it,  but  we 
must  pretend  to  be  awfully  surprised  when  the 
captain  brings  it  out.  But  Peter,  don't  you 
like  it?" 

"Pie,  my  dear?" 

"No,  but  like  having  everything  so  homey 
and  —  and  —  so  genuine  at  our  wedding?" 

"I  hope,"  said  Peter,  "it's  genuine  pie, 
but  I  see  what  you  mean,  my  dear." 

"It's  an  omen,  almost,  that  we'll  always  have 
the  good,  comfortable,  common  things  to  fall 
back  upon,  if  our  marriage  should  not  prove 
quite  all  we've  dreamed  it.  It's  been  so  perfect 
up  to  now;  it  must  drop  down  out  of  the  clouds 
some  time." 

It  seemed  rather  to  have  taken  a  sweep  up- 


270  The  Lovely  Lady 

ward  when,  with  sails  swelling  over  them  and 
the  beat  of  the  sea  under  the  bows,  they  stood 
up  to  be  married,  and  to  exhibit  capacities  of 
sustaining  itself  at  a  level  from  which  not  the  very 
soggy  and  sallow  complexioned  pie  with  the  cook 
graining  behind  it,  could  dislodge  the  two  most 
concerned  in  it.  It  wore  through  the  day  to  a 
contained  and  quiet  gayety  at  a  dinner  which 
took  place  in  the  ristoranta  over  the  water 
where  they  had  once  lunched  with  the  captain, 
and  lasted  until  Peter  had  brought  his  wife 
home  again  to  the  refurnished  palace.  It  had 
gone,  as  he  told  himself,  remarkably  well,  with 
every  intimation,  as  he  had  time  to  tell  himself 
in  his  last  hours  in  the  garden  with  his  cigar,  of 
going  much  better,  of  becoming  as  the  place 
gave  him  occasion  to  indulge  the  figure,  an 
enclosed  and  fragrant  garden,  in  which  if  no 
flaming  angel  of  desire  kept  the  gate  for  him, 
he  had  at  least  the  promise  of  refreshment. 

That  old  passion  for  Eunice  Goodward,  all 
his  feelings  for  all  the  women  he  had  known, 
served  to  show  him  what  Savilla  had  meant 
when  she  said  he  "gave  her  so  much  room"  — 
the  renewed  sense  of  the  spaciousness  of  life. 


The  Lovely  Lady  271 

It  would  be  there  for  his  wife  at  the  com- 
pletest,  and  if  she  had,  as  it  seemed,  turned  him 
out  of  the  Wonderful  House  in  order  to  live  in 
it  herself,  he  at  least  kept  the  gates.  And  was 
riot  this  the  proper  business  for  a  man?  He 
recalled  what  the  Princess  had  said  to  him  so 
long  ago  when  he  had  first  begun  to  think  of 
himself  as  a  bachelor.  "  It  takes  a  lot  of  dream 
ing  to  bring  one  like  me  to  pass."  Well,  he 
had  dreamed  and  he  had  slain  some  dragons. 
Later  there  would  be  children  playing  in  the 
House,  daughters  perhaps  .  .  .  Lovely 
Ladies.  The  world  would  be  a  better  place  for 
them  to  walk  about  in  because  of  all  that  he  had 
lost  and  been. 

When  he  went  into  the  garden  he  had 
half  expected  that  the  Princess  would  speak 
to  him;  the  place  was  full  of  hintsjof  her, 
faint  and  persuasive  as  the  scent  of  the  flowers 
in  the  dark,  little  riffles  of  his  pulse,  flushed 
surfaces,  the  tingling  of  his  palms  which  an 
nounced  her,  but  she  did  not  speak.  He  said 
to  himself  that  he  was  now  a  well  man  and  had 
seen  the  last  of  her.  Never  before  had  he  felt 
so  very  well. 


272  The  Lovely  Lady 

He  saw  the  light  moving  in  the  palace  be 
hind  him  as  his  wife  moved  to  complete  some 
of  her  arrangements;  he  heard  her  then  pacing 
along  the  marble  floor  of  the  great  hall  which 
went  quite  through  the  middle  of  it  —  she 
must  be  going  to  her  room,  and  in  a  little  while 
he  would  go  in  to  her  —  he  heard  the  light 
tapping  of  her  feet  and  then  he  saw  her  come, 
the  lit  lamp  in  her  hand. 

She  had  on  still  the  white  dress  in  which  she 
had  been  married,  and  over  it  she  had  thrown 
the  silver- woven  scarf  which  had  been  one  of 
his  first  gifts  to  her,  and  as  she  came  the  light 
glittered  on  it;  it  drew  from  the  polished  walls 
bright  reflections  in  which,  amid  the  gilded 
frames,  he  saw  the  dim  old  pictures  start  and 
waver  —  and  as  he  saw  her  coming  so,  Peter 
threw  away  his  cigar  and  gripped  suddenly  at 
the  balustrade  to  steady  him  where  he  stood, 
against  what  out  of  some  far  spring  of  his  youth 
rushed  upon  him,  as  he  saw  her  come  —  as  he 
had  always  seen  her,  as  he  knew  now  he  was 
to  see  her  always  —  his  wife  and  the  Lovely 
Lady. 

THE   END 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS 
GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


RETURN     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

TO—  ^      202  Main  Library 

LOAN  PERIOD  1 
HOME  USE 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

Renewals  and  Recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  the  due  date. 

Books  may  be  Renewed  by  calling     642-3405. 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


;MAR  2  8  1992 

--     > 

i;iAR  0  2 

CIBCULATX 

FORM  NO.  DD6 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKEl 
BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


GENERAL  LIBRARY  -  U.C.  BERKELE^ 


BDDD7St,23M 


313134 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 

~. 


